


with age comes revolution

by amurderof



Series: all the sacred boundaries we've overgrown [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Abuse, Abuse of Authority, Alcohol, Angst, Assassination Attempt(s), Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Class Differences, Class Issues, Dehumanization, Discussion of Abortion, Dom/sub Undertones, Drama, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Family Issues, Future Fic, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Intercrural Sex, Internalized Homophobia, Light Bondage, M/M, Multi, Non-Sexual Bondage, Non-Sexual Kink, Not Trespasser DLC Compliant, Oral Sex, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Physical Abuse, Politics, Poor Life Choices, Post-Endgame, Pre-Negotiated Kink, Repression, Sexual Slavery, Slave Trade, Slavery, Slurs, Socially Acceptable Homophobia, Spoilers, Stockholm Syndrome, Tevinter, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-13 21:07:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 82,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3396368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amurderof/pseuds/amurderof
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Halward Pavus is dead, and Dorian finds himself beholden to responsibilities he'd long since set aside.</p><p>Tevinter is his home, and he will make it his legacy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HUGE thank you to [fiveyearmission]() for her help with all her Dorian and Tevinter knowledge,and for betaing for me; you're truly indispensable, and I swear it's not just because I ruthlessly steal your headcanons. Huge follow-up thank you to Dorian/Bull fandom, because you continue to be stellar and delightful beyond reason and have treated me outstandingly. ♥
> 
> Recommended music: [this sucker right here](http://8tracks.com/tinyloudmoron/all-the-sacred-boundaries-we-ve-overgrown).

Skyhold has only changed superficially over the last dozen years, the interior altered at the whim of the Inquisitor, different faces crowding the halls and courtyard. It’s still the great fortress it has been for millennia, and it still makes Dorian feel calm to his bones when he walks through the gate, even now, immersed in the organized chaos that is the Chargers traveling, with his feet sore from walking too-long miles.

“Sight for sore eyes,” Bull mumbles next to him, and bumps his shoulder, gently enough that Dorian barely sways.

Dorian smiles up at him. “I wonder if they’ve finally patched the roof.”

“Hey now, don’t get ahead of yourself.”

Dorian laughs, loud and full, and then Manehn Lavellan is rushing from the castle into the courtyard, and he and Bull have their arms full of elf.

 

==

 

“Regale me with your adventures,” Lavellan says grandly, seated across from Dorian at one of the large tables in the dining hall. She looks good, healthy, the weight of two children settled in her cheeks and her hips, rounded where she used to be thin. Dorian remembers having a difficult time determining the age of his family’s slaves, all of them stiff and unchanging and uniformly haggard — but she’s aged, and, well. It suits her, makes her look almost regal. Though that may also be the fineries she’s clothed in, simple in design but made of silk, butter-soft leather… someone’s kept up their correspondence with Madame du Fer.

“We’re well,” Dorian says, and her face twists up at the lack of details.

“Surely you can give me more than that, Dorian.”

“Our adventures pale in comparison to yours, or to those of our youth, my dear Manehn,” Dorian replies, and she huffs loudly and then — they both laugh, with the ease of two people who have nearly died together many, many times.

They eat, and talk of nothing consequential, of her children and her dear commander. They trade stories of their companions, Lavellan’s keeping in touch easier over the years with her connections, though Dorian has an engaging tale to spin about running into another of the Friends of Red Jenny in Dairsmuid.

"It's always lovely to have you here, you know that," Lavellan says after they’ve caught themselves up, her small smile so good to behold, after so long. Two years, has it been? They've been in _Rivain_ for Maker's sake, and Dorian smiles back at her, with as much sentimentality as he can summon. "Is it just a visit?"

Dorian huffs a laugh. "Seeing machinations in every action now? How long did it take until you saw the world as Josie does?"

Lavellan tips her head towards him, her expression going stern. "It's not, then."

"Listen to you," Dorian says, and his heart aches at the careful look she gives him, how she seems to be trying to get a read on him. Years with an ex-spy have done Dorian wonders though, as far as schooling his expression goes, and she looks half-frustrated with him after the stretching silence.

"Creators, we've become politicians," she says, and wipes a hand across her face. "The both of us, what a waste."

"I was born a politician." Dorian pours himself more wine, and daintily drinks from his glass, sticking his pinkie out. Lavellan drops her elbow to the table and her face to her palm, and she — swear to Andraste — giggles. Maker, but he's missed her, and missed that look on her face.

She grabs part of her roll and dredges it through the gravy on her plate, takes a large bite of it and chews, wipes her mouth on the back of her hand, and arches an eyebrow at him. "I was absolutely not."

"You're doing a bang up job of it, so I've heard," Dorian replies, and she shrugs.

She drops the roll on her plate and leans back in her chair, biting her bottom lip. "It needs doing. I do my best."

Dorian sets his wine down and picks up his fork, slides a hunk of pork around on his plate. "Always so humble, our Herald."

Lavellan laughs. "You'd accept nothing less." She pushes herself upright in her chair, spears a slice of potato with her own fork and points it at him. "But you, tell me about you. I've been here managing a league of children and also my offspring. I'm boring. It's sit in the big chair, listen to nobility all day. You're actually out there, doing good."

"I'm really not," Dorian says, setting down his fork. "Most days I'm simply making sure the jobs we've picked up won't result in our untimely deaths." Which is an unnecessary task — Bull's not an idiot, entertains only what he's certain their boys can handle, takes only what he knows would return a worthwhile profit. "I can get the Chargers places they wouldn't have otherwise gone. Or been able to go. I may not be in the good graces of House Pavus, but few people are aware of that."

"But you're not going to Tevinter. Surely your family ties are a hindrance..." Lavellan cuts herself off with a gasp. "Dorian. You've not gone to Tevinter."

"No, of course not," Dorian agrees, and takes another long swig of wine. It's awfully good wine to be drunk so wastefully, but Lavellan's a smart girl and she'll cotton on to things soon enough, and he'd like to meet her overly dramatic overprotective streak head-on and slightly intoxicated.

"You mean 'not yet'."

Damn. "I do mean 'not yet'."

She looks visibly shaken. He feels such affection for her in that moment, remembers the spritely young elf who'd told him off when he'd said she was the first Dalish he'd ever met, then defended him to all and sundry at every turn. "Dorian..."

"I received a missive once we'd lit upon Denerim, from my mother. My father has passed, and I'm his named heir. She's keeping the estate in my absence, but is reasonably concerned about its safety."

It's easy to recount, rolls off his tongue like he'd practiced it, as though Bull hadn't had to unclench his fingers from the parchment, taken him by the hands and guided him to sit, knelt beside him until Dorian had told him what it'd said. Bull hadn't even attempted to read it, the kind lout, rolled it up and kept it at his side until Dorian could say the words out loud.

“Fenedhis," Lavellan breathes out, and her hand goes to her mouth. Dorian's certain she's thinking of her family now, her parents or her brood, how it would feel to lose her father, or Cullen.

How odd it must feel, to empathize with his mother.

"I'm sorry, Dorian," she says, and she reaches across the table to take his hand.

"These things happen." Dorian squeezes her fingers. What he feels about his father's death is not remorse. Is not empathy. He's gotten through the grief, has processed it, packaged it away. “I’m fine.”

She's not accepting that, he can see it in the stubborn set of her jaw. She's going to ask, and she's going to push, and he didn't come back to Skyhold for her to sit in judgment of him—

There's yelling from outside, the sound of something solid hitting something else, and when the door to the hall swings open, Dorian sends a brief prayer of gratitude to the Maker. Bull lumbers in, two children attached to him at the shoulders, little hands locked around either side of his horns. Bull's laughing, the kids are laughing — though Bull stops once he's inside, must get a good look at their faces. Bull inclines his head towards Dorian and waits for him to set the stage, even while Lavellan's poppets tug at him like they can steer him where they want to go. Perhaps that's what they've been distracting themselves with.

"Deyren, Lucy, he's not a horse," Lavellan says with a sigh, and stands, reaches out for her youngest even as the boy protests. Dorian has of course known of children born of an elf and a human, but it still surprised him to see human ears, bone structure — almost nothing of elves in Lavellan's children. How odd it must have been for her, proud and Dalish as she is.

"Mamae, he said we could," Deyren whines, but he giggles as his mother takes him from Bull's arm.

Bull smiles down at Lavellan, shifts Lucy in his grip. "I've been told I'm an excellent beast of burden." Lavellan rolls her eyes at him, and Dorian watches them, watches Bull lift Lucy — so small, shock of red hair curling about her ears, with her father's awkward sweetness. She's a little terror though, he remembers as much, and when Bull sets her on her feet she sprints towards Dorian, tackles him at the waist, calls him uncle and demands to know what tattoos he got in Rivain — and Dorian loops an arm around her, presses a kiss to the top of her head.

 

==

 

"You okay?"

Neither he nor Bull retain rooms at Skyhold; there's no reason for it, for space to go unused for years at a time. Lavellan insisted on showing them to one of the best guest suites personally. It's lovely, well-furnished, the bed soft when Dorian sits down. He doesn't remember the last time he had a chance to enjoy such a bed.

Bull finishes his sweep of the room — old habits don't so much die hard as never die at all — and starts to go through their packs, which Lavellan had delivered to their room before she'd even shown them where they'd be staying. He lays out Dorian’s toiletries, his own significantly smaller set of oils, takes out Dorian’s clothes to be hung up later to prevent wrinkles. Dorian watches him move, the muscles of his broad back, loves the lout _fiercely_ , until Bull finishes and turns to him.

"You looked pretty unhappy when I walked in on you two. So, you okay?"

Bull slowly works himself down into a squat in front of Dorian, his knee popping, and Dorian sighs and leans forward, lays a hand across Bull's shoulder. "Stand up before you can't."

Bull huffs at him, lifts his shoulder under Dorian's grip. "The old jokes are uncalled for. And a really shitty attempt at distracting me from getting an answer."

Dorian slides his hand up to Bull's neck, tugs on an earlobe. "I'm not trying to distract you." He's not sure what to say. They'd agreed, that Dorian would tell the Inquisitor of their plans, explain the situation, and request any assistance she could provide. "She focused on the unimportant. I didn't have time to fully explain, before you interrupted us."

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that. They were so damn convinced they could make me go wherever they wanted me to — didn't realize where we'd ended up. Did you see how big they've gotten?"

Dorian nods, is distantly grateful that Lavellan's children adore their lumbering giant of an “uncle”. Bull would insist he's just humoring them, that he's happy to play with the kids while the adults are responsible together, but Dorian's not an idiot. He's... pleased, that when they return to Skyhold, Bull has the chance to enjoy himself.

"She knows of the circumstances that House Pavus finds itself in, and that we're planning for Tevinter. I'm sure right at this minute she's telling Cullen, and Josephine will know as soon as they can get a raven sent off."

Bull looks thoughtful, leans into Dorian's touch on his neck. "Josie'll want us to take a fucking envoy. Turn it into a regular old diplomatic mission."

"We'll need to dissuade her of that idea, then. I've no plans for diplomacy."

Bull huffs at him, rolls his shoulders back and slowly rises to his feet. Dorian swears he can hear the joints creaking, and the swell of affection he feels in his chest helps with the tension that has been spreading throughout his whole form, since Lavellan worked things out.

Bull sits down next to him — the bedframe handles it quite well, Dorian will need to pass along his compliments to the quartermaster — and reaches for one of Dorian’s hands, draws it into his lap. “Diplomacy’s what we’ve got, kadan.”

They’ve had this conversation before — or iterations of this conversation, arguments about the status quo, about what Dorian wants to accomplish _realistically_ , what power he’d have upon returning to Tevinter and how it could be applied. “This would all be far easier if you were much stupider,” Dorian tells him, though he’s smiling when he says it, and Bull tightens his hold on Dorian’s hand.

“You’ll take your seat in the Magisterium, and ingratiate yourself to the Archon. Your place in the Inquisition’s gonna help with that—”

“Only so far,” Dorian interrupts. He’s kept in touch with Maevaris sporadically, knows that over the years the venatori have gone underground, but that they still operate within the Imperium. The Maker only knows who in the Magisterium has been corrupted by their influence, who function as little more than marionettes. Who pulls the strings. “Tomorrow I’ll speak with Alexius, see if there’s anything useful to be gleaned from his deteriorating brain.”

Bull breathes out slowly next to him. He doesn’t tell Dorian it’s a bad idea, because they’ve also already had _that_ conversation. “You gonna at least let me hang out in the background and look menacing?”

Dorian knows it’s Bull’s attempt at being supportive, but Dorian can think of few ways to make his addressing Alexius worse than his being accompanied by his qunari lover. What a disaster it would be. “After you speak with Lavellan about anything she can grant us as assistance, you will be waiting for me. My reward for not setting him aflame and then resurrecting his corpse to do it again.”

Bull lifts up Dorian’s hand, kisses his knuckles, then looks him in the eye. “Damn, you’re hot when you’re vengeful.”

Dorian laughs, jerks his hand just enough to lightly knock his hand against Bull’s chin, and Bull accepts this distraction, bites around one of Dorian’s fingers. “Get on the bed. We’ve only got a couple nights to break it in.”

 

==

 

Dorian wakes to an empty bed, and a tray with breakfast laid out across the correspondence desk in the far corner of the room. The porridge is still steaming, Bull’s not been up for too long then, and Dorian tucks in with aplomb. Sweet Andraste, but he’s been living far too roguish a life if hot porridge and a sliced apple taste divine to his palate. That’s something he’ll have to train himself out of if he wants to last longer than a handful of days in Tevinter.

He eats, dresses, frowns at his reflection in the mirror until he’s pleased with how he looks — _distinguished_ , Bull always says whenever he catches Dorian’s fussing. Bull doesn’t have to deal with gray hairs, and his wrinkles complement his scars. Dorian’s first line of both defense and offense is his appearance however, especially given who he’s meeting with today. Though “meeting with” implies something on far more equal footing than forcing a prisoner to entertain you for an hour.

Dorian leaves the tray of empty dishes outside of their door, and makes his way to the prison under Skyhold, has to explain himself to the jailer — who doesn't remember him! Introducing himself as Dorian Pavus, companion of the Inquisitor, normally does wonders and yet he has to demand to be let through, wastes minutes he could be using to sweet-talk Alexius on convincing a skeptical old man into letting him through. The man finally insists on getting the Inquisitor's express approval, but he also heads off to do it himself, and Dorian gives himself half a moment to consider being honest — before simply opening the heavy door to the prison and heading down. There are a number of occupied cells, surely petty criminals from about Skyhold, what use would the Inquisition have for jailing anyone nowadays, but Dorian knows exactly where Alexius is held, has been a frequent visitor over the many years since Lavellan dictated his punishment.

"Good morning," Dorian says brightly, falsely eager, and drops into a squat — he'd mocked Bull last night for the same maneuver,  but sweet Andraste if he doesn't hear a pop that surely shouldn't have happened — even-level with Alexius's slumped form on the cot allotted him. "You look like shit."

Alexius doesn't move from off of the cot, but he does open his eyes. Good on him, he hasn't died yet. He swears under his breath and rolls over on the cot, covers his head with an arm.

"Is that how you greet me, after all these years?" Dorian reaches forward, knocks his rings against the cell bars, and from down the row of cells another prisoner swears at him in elvish. "Well, I'm making friends. Have you? Surely once Fiona left for Denerim, the Inquisition lost its use for you as a research assistant. Have you been moldering away here for a decade?"

Alexius remains still, and Dorian sighs but doesn't let himself look any kind of defeated. Taunting him is probably not helpful, but Dorian finds he can't help it. There's something truly... rewarding about standing on the other side of bars from his once-mentor, years after his downfall. Perhaps it's simply solid evidence that Dorian made the right choice in betraying him.

"I'll let you alone once you've spoken with me," Dorian says, and lowers a knee to the stone floor. "I've questions about the venatori, your favorite subject."

Alexius shifts on the cot, rolls slowly over onto his back — and Dorian gets a good look at him, the first good look he's had of his mentor in a decade. He _does_ looks like warmed-over shit, the lines of his face deep, his eyes yellowing, his eyes and cheeks sunken. No noble retirement for Magister Alexius, not in the depths of Skyhold.

"I've nothing to say to you," Alexius says, his voice rattling from deep within his chest. He coughs, wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand, and Dorian feels... pity, maybe. It's a distant emotion, buried under the loathing that sits at the forefront of Dorian's skull.

"I'm sure you've much to say to me, actually." Dorian unbends his knee, ignores the creaking of his joints — he is much too young, far younger than Bull, to have creaking joints — and sits on his arse on the cold stone, wraps a hand around one of the bars in front of him. "Though I do have some specific topics I'd like to cover."

Alexius sits up, props his back against the cell wall, and glares at Dorian as though he could kill him with his aged eyes. "I've no reason to tell you anything."

"True," Dorian says, and he takes his time, his rings jingling when they brush against the cell bar closest to his hand. Now, this, this he should've talked over with Lavellan. He should have forced the issue even after Bull and the children had barged in on their steadily awkward conversation, ensured he'd have some sort of bargaining chip when he spoke with Alexius. “Or not. You’re doing no one any good hidden away in jail, waiting until death takes you.”

Alexius narrows his eyes. “Are you here to bribe me?”

Dorian holds both of his hands in front of him, an innocent man, he. “Is it bribery to ask for information in exchange for some sort of reward? I thought that was a negotiation.”

Alexius laughs. It sounds like it’s being pulled out of him, from the depths of the husk of his body, and he coughs again, once he’s finished. “Any information I have is a decade old, before your damned Inquisition ruined the Elder One’s plans.”

“Ah yes, Corypheus, may he rot in the Void for decades to come.” It’s a good sign, that Alexius hasn’t immediately dismissed him. Dorian appreciates it, this honesty from a man who is likely dying, or at the very least has little left to plot towards. “Regardless, you know who remained in Tevinter while you ventured out to enact Corypheus’s grand plan. You can give me their names, and I will arrange for your release from this decrepit cell.”

“You’ve plans to return to Tevinter.”

Dorian smiles at him and sets his palms behind him on the stone, leans back. “I have.”

Alexius looks him over, stays silent for what must be minutes. He clearly still has some loyalty to Corypheus, but Dorian wonders what he regrets — what, beyond Felix, he wishes he could change.

“What a _delightful_ idea,” Alexius says, crossing his thin arms one over the other.

Dorian laughs, unable to stop himself. “Don’t you mean ‘terrible’?”

"Of course not." His voice catches on the 's', rasps it out, and Dorian shifts uncomfortably on the stone. Dorian's no stranger to death, has seen it nearly every day of the last fourteen years of his life, but he's never been so close to someone he knew, someone he was familiar with, so close to the end of their days.

"You'll go to Tevinter and enact all of your 'great changes', won't you. Ride in with your savage and your little friends and right all of the wrongs, save Tevinter from herself. Gone will be the blood magic, the lies, the backstabbing — Tevinter will rise victorious from her own ashes and you'll be atop the bones that wouldn't burn."

It seems to take something out of Alexius, talking for that long, and he slumps back against the cell wall and closes his eyes, simply breathing for several long moments. Dorian forces himself to breathe as well, to bite back his immediate reaction — he's no longer a child, and Alexius has not been his mentor for a decade. Dorian doesn't need to protest what he's saying, try and convince him of the inaccuracy of his protestations. It'd be pointless, a waste of both of their time.

"Yes, thank you for that prediction. So tell me then, who I should start with in my own personal exalted march? You surely had contacts, associates, sponsors."

Alexius's whole body shakes with a laugh, and he tips his head towards Dorian, opens his cloudy eyes. "I don't want to be released from this cell for anything but my own death. Can you grant me that? One last favor for an old friend."

Dorian's hands curl into his fists against the stone, and he breathes in slowly, thinks through his answer. Alexius deserves more than an easy death, deserves every year of servitude and every years of imprisonment allotted him.

"Your pride is fascinating, Dorian," Alexius croaks, and with what appears to be great effort, clasps his hands in his lap. "You blame me for so much, and yet if given the same situation, I don't doubt you'd adopt a similar path."

"Oh please," Dorian says, and rolls his eyes. He pushes himself up, sits forward, dropping his hands in his lap. "You'll not drag me down into the same hole as you, my dear Alexius."

"I will. You've no children, but what would you do to save your Inquisitor? Your trifling band of mercenaries? Your lover?" Alexius's face twists into a sneer, his many wrinkles making the expression more grotesque than necessary. "You've been wronged by me, by your father, by the whole of Tevinter as far as you're concerned — what will you do to achieve parity? What will it take to appease your hurt pride?"

Dorian knows this tactic, remembers Alexius taunting him when they trained, asking him what he hoped to accomplish, what he would be willing to achieve it. Dorian learned early to ignore Alexius's words, focus on his objective. But Dorian feels the anger churning in his gut, the tempered rage he's never fully excised — he's out of practice, clearly. “This is not about pride, Alexius. I know what Tevinter could be. The Imperium is festering. It will collapse in upon itself if something isn’t done.”

“Then let it.” Alexius coughs. “I’ve no ties to Tevinter now; I’ve no reason to care about it. Why do you?”

 _Because it’s my home_ , Dorian thinks furiously, and he stands, wraps a hand around a cell bar. “You’ll tell me who aided you in Tevinter.”

“And you’ll kill me once I have.”

Dorian tightens his hold on the bar. “Yes. I swear it.”

Alexius studies him, tries to detect a lie in him, most likely, and it’s a long minute before he nods, opens his mouth, rattles off names that Dorian does him damnedest to memorize. A handful of magisters, second heirs, Chantry officials—

Dorian ignores the knot twisting up in his ribcage. “How far up the Chantry does this go?”

“There’s no conspiracy, if that’s what worries you. Divine Caeso is as devout as he was when sustained.”

“So still a liar,” Dorian snaps, and Alexius inclines his head towards him, says nothing. Dorian feels fiercely ashamed, for one sinking moment, before he forces the emotion down. He breathes out, slowly, and takes his hand from the bar, smooths his palms down his thighs, turns to leave. “Thank you for the information, Alexius.”

“You swore—” Alexius hisses, and Dorian pauses on his way towards the stairs, looks at Alexius over his shoulder.

“You’ve been gone from Tevinter as long as I have. Have you forgotten that means _nothing_?”

Alexius curses him, and the sound echoes up the stairwell and is lost when the door slams shut behind Dorian.

 

==

 

“You’ve been causing trouble for my guardsmen.”

“Not true,” Dorian says easily, and tips his head back to see Cullen Rutherford in the flesh, standing behind Dorian’s chair like intimidation still works for him. As though it ever did. “I’ve never.”

Cullen sighs, moves around Dorian to take the chair across from him. Dorian’s honestly not sure he ever saw Cullen in the library during the years they spent together in the Inquisition; it suits him better now than it would have then, wearing his ruff of feathers and armor. There’s a less immediate need for the Inquisition’s forces now, and Cullen looks better for it, face lined only with the stress of the day-to-day, hair graying at his temples. Alas, dressed in the best Ferelden has to offer, though.

“What business did you have in the prison?”

"I wanted to say hello to an old friend," Dorian replies, and Cullen's face crashes into a frown.

He shakes his head, and places his elbows on his thighs, steepling his fingers in front of his face. He stares at Dorian as though Dorian's a puzzle to be worked out, or a keep that Cullen has been tasked with planning how to invade. "You could have asked."

"And I find it highly likely that you would've told me no," Dorian says, and waves his hand, as though it would effectively scatter Cullen's protestations. "I've left Alexius in one piece, only slightly more brokenhearted than he was previously, with knowledge I require for my next venture. It seemed like a win-win."

"Manehn told me about your 'next venture'." Cullen shakes his head, and Dorian feels the sting from the dismissal in his voice. Cullen remains silent, and Dorian doesn't speak to fill the quiet — he came to the library to think, after all, and without Leliana's birds above or Solas's aggrieved muttering below, it's been rather lovely.

"You're not going to tell me off for it?" Dorian finally asks, because it's not awkward to sit by oneself in silence, but to sit silently with company, with a friend he's not spoken with in far too long, is undeniably so.

Cullen lets out a heavy sigh, and leans back in his chair. Shakes his head again, and huffs out what could be considered a laugh. "Not my place to, Dorian. I'm sure you've heard it from everyone."

Dorian shrugs. "You'd be correct. It's refreshing not to hear it from you, though it’s implied.”

Cullen pushes himself up from his chair, reaches out a hand to him. "I keep a chess board set up in my office so Deyren and Lucy don't upset it. Come play."

Dorian breathes out, slowly, and grabs Cullen's hand to help himself up.

 

==

 

Dorian lays out across the bed, hands clasped across his stomach, and stares at the roof. Thatched, of course, because neither he nor Bull are animals in a barn… he wonders if Bull’s room is still a bedroom, or if they’ve converted it to storage. Who stays there now, if it is someone’s quarters. Useless thoughts.

Bull sits at the correspondence desk, rubbing balm onto the base of his horns, while he reviews prospective jobs for the boys while they’re gone. Dorian had asked him what the point of it was, there was no way Bull would be able to line up enough work to cover their absence — Bull had told him, voice quiet and firm, that he was gonna do what he could, while he could. It’d sounded damnably final, and Dorian had left him to it.

Bull’s tone weighs on Dorian now. Bull’s tone, and Cullen’s resignation. Alexius’s goading. Lavellan’s concern.

For years he’s wanted this. In the back of his mind, he’s plotted it out — what he would say, what he would do. What he could accomplish if given the chance. The letter from his mother was simply the galvanizing force, what finally gave him a _reason_. His reason, though. Maker.

“Do you think I’m selfish?”

Bull turns in his chair, one hand still on his head. “About something specifically, or in general?”

Dorian pushes himself up on his elbows to glare at him, and something about that movement must communicate that he’s not joking because Bull’s hand drops from his horn and he stands, walks over to the foot of the bed.

“About this,” Dorian clarifies. “About what we’re going to do.”

“I don’t think there’s a good way for me to answer that question,” Bull replies, and Dorian simultaneously appreciates his honesty and loathes it. Bull sits on the mattress, slides up enough that he can grab one of Dorian’s feet and hold it across his lap, his large fingers massaging into his sole.

Dorian breathes out slowly, and slumps back onto the bed, throwing one of his arms across his eyes. “I feel like I’ve been acting since I arrived here yesterday,” he confesses, swallowing thickly. “Like I’ve had an agenda with everyone I’ve spoken with.” With Lavellan he needed her support; with Alexius, information. He looks back at his actions over the day and… he’d even played the charming man with Cullen, so easy to fall into the patterns — at least he’d won at chess!

Bull finds a particularly sore spot on Dorian’s arch and Dorian finds himself relaxing into the pain. “It’s good practice,” Bull says, his voice too damn reasonable for what he’s actually saying.

Dorian drops his arm to the mattress and sits up, careful not to kick at Bull when he moves. “For Tevinter.” He’s right, of course, even if Dorian’s felt dishonest all day.

“That’s why I’m going with you.”

“Foot rubs?” Dorian says, and Bull wraps his hand around Dorian’s foot and squeezes, just this side of too-hard.

Bull loosens his grip and slides his hand up Dorian’s leg, fingers barely fitting under the hem of his trousers. He catches Dorian’s eyes and holds the gaze, until Dorian feels like there’s something pressing down on his chest — a comforting weight, making him conscious of his every breath.

“You don’t have an agenda with me. When we’re alone, you’re not gonna be Magister Dorian Pavus, and if you try to be, we’ll work it out of you.” Bull scrapes his nails, lightly, down Dorian’s shin, makes it hard for Dorian to focus beyond that sensation. “With me, you’ll just be you.”

Dorian closes his eyes, presses his palm against each of his eyelids in turn, until he sees lights. Bull eventually goes back to working his massive fingers into Dorian’s foot, until Dorian lets out a low moan, opens his eyes and sits up and reaches for him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Orrrr instead of it taking two weeks, it could actually take 5 days??? Enjoy!

Bull finds Krem in the dining hall in the early morning of their third day at Skyhold, hands him a stack of too-few jobs to take on in the following weeks. Krem doesn’t mock him for his sentimentality. Good guy.

“Don’t let them underpay you just because I’m not there,” Bull says, and Krem does roll his eyes at that, but he also nudges Bull with his shoulder, tucks the papers inside his shirt.

“Think I’ll rebrand us ‘Krem’s Chargers’, and charge extra for _me_ ,” Krem says, and the ache Bull’s felt behind his sternum for the last month, since Dorian received that letter from his mom, goes incandescent and Bull hides it with a laugh.

“Nothing could go wrong,” he says, with more of a smile than he feels, and damn Krem but he gets it, doesn’t smile back. Claps him on the shoulder.

“We’ll check in with Skyhold monthly. You need any of us, all you have to do is send word.”

Bull nods, cycles through everything he could say — nothing useful, all of it emotional in some way — and runs his hand through Krem’s hair, ruffling it up. Krem curses at him, smacks his hand away, then... shit. Krem loops an arm up and around Bull's shoulder, gives him a hug that Bull takes a moment to return.

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do," Krem tells him, and Bull laughs humorlessly.

"I'll do my damnedest not to get a tribune on my ass."

"You'd better."

 

==

 

Dorian's still asleep when Bull returns to their room, so Bull puts together their packs in silence, sets them by the door, and crawls into bed next to him. Dorian half-wakes with the jostling, turns towards him, settles when Bull slips his arm under and around his waist.

"'Time is it?"

"Early yet. An hour till the castle's bustling."

Dorian groans next to him, presses his face into Bull's side. "We should get going."

"Don't want to say our goodbyes?" Bull circles his fingers against the small of Dorian's naked back, drinks in the little shiver Dorian gives with a roll of his shoulders.

"Not particularly." Dorian draws a hand across his face, rubs the sleep from his eyes. "You've spoken with Krem?" Bull nods, and Dorian exhales slowly. "Anyone else would tell us not to go."

It’s a shitty excuse for Dorian to not have to deal with the consequences of this choice, of going to Tevinter, putting off the inevitable, but all that's ahead of them is consequences, and Bull's not interested in bringing anything down on them early.

“Get your pretty ass out of bed then, and we can be off before anybody's feet hit the ground." Bull unwraps himself from around Dorian and gets back up to double-check the room, ensure they've packed everything. He finds a pair of Dorian's smalls under the bed, and he can't keep the laugh in.

“What?” Dorian rolls over to the edge of the mattress and leans over to look at him, reaches down and pokes at the top of his head with what Bull knows is for-now a pristine nail, then smooths his fingertip over the same spot. "You can't crack before we even leave Ferelden."

Bull looks up at him, gets a good long look at Dorian's thoughtful expression, before he closes his eye, Dorian's hand sliding down the edge of Bull's face to cup his chin. "You've got that planned then, my descent in madness."

Dorian doesn't laugh, doesn't make a single noise beyond what the dry air's doing to his nose, breathing just heavier than it was when they were in the humid reaches of Rivain. Dorian draws his hand slowly back and forth over Bull's jaw, down to his neck, up to under his ear. "It's already happened, what with your agreeing to go with me in the first place."

Bull tilts his head on one pass of Dorian's hand, manages to plant a kiss on the fleshy bit of his palm under his thumb. "D'you wanna ask me again?"

Dorian's hand stutters in its movements, and Bull keeps his eye shut. Slides it open when Dorian's hand starts moving again, twists so that Dorian's dragging his knuckles across Bull's cheek. "I don't need to, do I."

Bull pushes himself up to his feet using the bed, swallowing the groan that starts in his fucking knee, and chucks Dorian's smalls at his face. Dorian bats them away before they hit and curses at him, throws out an arm towards Bull to smack his side, and Bull catches his hand and squeezes, once.

"Get out of bed and get dressed. We've got a lot of ground to cover before we get to bundle you up on a boat again." He's not being hyperbolic — the wind blowing in from the Amaranthine off of Denerim made Dorian clam up like a… well, a _disciplined_ chantry sister, whine until he was buried in skins and hiding in a corner below deck so no one saw the fireball he had burning between his cupped hands.

Dorian lets out a low moan and levers himself up out of bed, changes into the clothes Bull laid out for him, and then repacks his bag, the asshole.

 

==

 

Traveling’s traveling. It’s dirty, it’s too-slow, and there's not a lot of crap to focus on beyond the rhythm of his feet against the hard-packed ground. They could've taken horses from Dennet but neither of them wanted to be indebted to the Inquisition with no surefire way to pay them back. Bull definitely wasn't gonna put the tab on the Chargers. He doesn't want Krem barreling after them into Tevinter; all he'd need is an excuse.

Dorian's resilience doesn't surprise him anymore; he still complains as much as he used to, but most of it's for show, not rooted in much actual discomfort. A handful of miles outside of Crestwood, Dorian stops on the road, looks off towards the setting sun, and heaves a great sigh. "I suppose it's too much to hope we make it to town before nightfall."

"You like sleeping on the ground," Bull says, and Dorian doesn't even commit the effort to glare at him. "We've gotta get you roughed up as much as possible before you're spoiled rotten."

"Oh yes," Dorian agrees, and continues down the road, rolling his shoulders to resettle his pack more comfortably on his back. "Maker forbid I appear before my mother for the first time in a decade looking anything like what she remembers."

Bull laughs, follows after Dorian, thinks about how that meeting'll go down. He's got several contingency plans coming together for Tevinter: the first is if it's a lie, if House Pavus has resorted to emotional subterfuge to reclaim their lost heir. If Halward Pavus greets them upon their arrival in Qarinus, Bull's gonna need to focus on restraining Dorian from going for his father’s throat, then on keeping himself from doing the same. (He gets it, family, in a manner of speaking. The Chargers are his family, Dorian's his family. The Inquisition, to an extent, is his family. But when you choose your family, you normally get to weed out the bad apples from the bunch; you get born into one, and you're stuck with them regardless of how much damage you do to each other.) If Halward Pavus is alive, they'll leave, or one of them will frigging take Pavus down, and then he'll be dead anyway and Dorian will take his seat in the Magisterium and they'll go from there.

Second is what they'll do if the letter was sincere, how they'll handle Dorian taking his father's place, plunging himself back into Tevinter society, Bull not so much at his side as standing a deferential distance behind and to the left. This is the most likely scenario, Bull figures. He'll act as Dorian's body slave, maybe take the place of the chief slave, and use what he knows from his days in Seheron, from his days tramping around Orlais and Ferelden, to glean as much info as he can from the lower ranks of society. Krem's filled him in on some shit he wouldn't have otherwise known, details about the slave classes, even some stuff on Soporati. Neither of them had talked about Bull tracking down Krem's father, but Bull likes to think it was implied. While he's working with the bottom, Dorian'll be at the top, charming his way back into the minds and whatever's left of the hearts of the Magisterium.  The info Alexius gave them is out-of-date but still potentially useful, if those magisters are still in action — and Dorian does still have friends he can call upon.

Third scenario is they show up, and regardless of whether it's a lie or not, they get arrested and maybe killed. Well, Dorian won't be — Bull's done his reading, listened to Dorian rant about history and status enough to know that House Pavus comes from tainted but still damn powerful roots, has survived through the ages by the grit of its very prestigious teeth. But even with that, an exiled (self-imposed or not) heir and his Tal-Vashoth companion — who took part in a takedown effort that may've saved the world but also proved the Imperial Chantry were fucking liars — arriving expected but generally unannounced could go up like a house on fire. Dorian, status depending, could escape relatively unharmed, but Bull's not assuming the same for himself. Shit, Bull's still surprised some days he's made it to 51, so it'd've been a good run. Dorian would pull himself together afterwards, or he'd set half of Qarinus on fire and have the social and political disorder he was hoping for, just more… violent.

There are variations of each, but Bull can handle those as they come. 'Course, they still have to get to Qarinus. That's straightforward on paper, been fine so far, but they're going by sea which means a stop-over in Rivain. The assignment they were just on was different enough, allowed them to stay south, and did what they went there to do, fooled around a bit but didn’t attract attention.

This time they need to ensure they don't end up in one of the more Qunari-friendly northern ports, and then there's the task of actually finding a boat willing to take them to Tevinter. Bull's half-expecting that they'll have to take a detour to Nevarra — Dorian'd probably cream himself over the prospect of visiting the Necropolis, but he's also been... different, since he got his mother's letter.

Shit, of course he has. His father's dead. Even estranged, that could do a number on you.

But Bull knows it's more than that.

Bull remembers the Dorian he met in Haven, the wall of sarcasm and untouchable pomposity he'd structured around himself — it was an impressive front, clearly carefully maintained, but it'd still been a front. He's kept the wit, the strong opinions, but Bull's watched him lose a lot of the performance parts of it, the aspects that served as more of a defense mechanism than a personality. The part of him that used to say things because he thought he should, because that’s what was expected of him by some big _someone_ , has steadily disappeared over the years, or at least been driven underground.

And now he’s familiarizing himself with that whole act again. He'd said as much to Bull in Skyhold, and it's true, that it's ostensibly a good thing. What better way to step into Tevinter high society with several meters of meticulously constructed persona protecting him...

" _Bull_."

Bull comes to a quick stop, a handful of inches from Dorian's chest, and yeah, that was the voice Dorian uses when he's not getting the attention he deserves. Must’ve been hassling Bull for a while.

"It's wonderful to know you've enough of a mind to lose yourself in it, but I think it's time to stop for the night." Dorian rests a hand on his hip, arches one delicately sculptured brow at Bull, and Bull runs a hand over the back of his neck. The sun's almost gone, Dorian’s face in shadow, and it’s hard to see down the road. Shiiit, he really was getting caught up in his thoughts. Poor form.

"Yeah. Yeah, find us some kindling, I'll set up camp."

Dorian rolls his eyes at him, and tromps off into the undergrowth off to the side of the road, disappearing into the treeline. Bull drops his pack from off his shoulders and gets their roll out, finds enough rocks to construct a pretty lame pit just under the edge of the trees. Not the most fortified of positions, but Bull can admit in the privacy of his own mind that getting waylaid on their trek to Denerim might end better for them than the alternative. Or they’ll just pulverize whoever messes with ‘em.

Dorian gets back a couple minutes later, drops a chunk of wood — he'd been delighted as fuck when Dalish dragged him off once and shared with him the joy of shooting electricity at trees instead of using an axe, the weirdos — and then an armful of kindling into the fire pit.

He sits, rubs his hands together and flicks fire onto the dry wood, and leans back on his palms when it takes, looking pleased as sin. Bull sits down next to him, a bit farther away from the flames, and unpacks one of the sets of foodstuffs Lavellan had pressed on him while Dorian was flouncing around Skyhold, pissing off prisoners.

They eat sparsely, and when the fire's burnt down to crackling embers, they turn in, Dorian pressed along Bull's side. Bull wraps an arm around him, thinks only of the present. Eventually sleeps.

 

==

 

Day three they hit Crestwood and trek above the Storm Coast, then continue on to the long stretch of coastline alongside the Waking Sea the next day. Dorian starts practicing his muttering about the blasted wind blowing in off the water and Bull digs out his old saddle blanket, chucks it at Dorian's head. Dorian holds it in his hands and then looks up at Bull with one of the most flabbergasted expressions Bull's seen him wear, and then Dorian throws it around his shoulders and thanks Bull, quietly.

The farther out from Skyhold they get, the quieter they get. Bull talks sometimes, points out shit on the coast he thinks looks cool, but after a while Dorian only acknowledges him with a nod, or a shrug, or a look. Dorian’s stuck inside his head, and he’s not throwing off any signals he wants Bull to help him get out of it. He lets Bull pull him closer at night though, hooks the fingers of one hand under the waistband of Bull’s pants. Doesn’t sleep well, regardless of how accustomed he’s become to sleeping on the ground.

They make it to Denerim late into the night of the eighth day, tired and sore. They’ve got a handful of connections in the city — Bull’s _convinced_ they were hired by the king once — and though Dorian seems half-asleep when he turns them down the right streets and alleyways to end up near the docks, he still manages to shove open the door to one of Denerim’s fancier establishments without tipping over.

Sure, the Pearl is a brothel. But it’s a _nice_ one, and with the way the tension has settled in the line of Dorian's back over the last couple days, it could be just what they're looking for.

This pretty little thing flounces up to Dorian, doesn’t even look at Bull, and asks him what someone like him’s doing in a place like this. Dorian gives the boy a baleful glare and stalks off to the bar, and the kid looks over at Bull with a bemused look on his face. Yeah, nobody in Ferelden ever understands that between the two of ‘em, the qunari’s more approachable.

Bull huffs a tired laugh and waves a hand at him. “Don’t worry about it, kid. We’re just looking for Sanga.”

The boy’s expression drops and he lets out a sigh, mutters something about time-wasters and heads over to a table to shop his wares. Bull follows Dorian to the bar, stands behind him as he sits on a stool, and tips his head to Sanga when she walks over. She’s got more grey in her hair than when he last saw her, and her laugh lines are fighting with her frown lines for most distinguishing feature on her face — then again, he probably looks old too. "Hey, beautiful, long time no see."

Dorian elbows him surreptitiously and leans forward on the bar, probably gives her a smile if the eyeroll she shoots him is anything to go by.

"There _are_ inns in this city," she says pointedly, and wipes the bar where Dorian's elbows rest with a rag, pushes him back until his arms are off the wood and he's up against Bull's chest.

"You like our money," Dorian says. He's laying on the charm, Bull can hear it, the words coming out low and dry from their week on the road.

Sanga snorts and balls the rag up in her hands — for half a second Bull thinks she's gonna chuck it at them — and then she shoves it under the bar and reaches for mugs, pours them both beer and sets them down on the counter one after the other. "I do like your money," she says, and Dorian leans forward again, takes one of the mugs.

"We need a room, and what you know of the ships docked." Dorian takes a swig of beer and makes a disgusted noise, and then drinks more.

"Gold on the counter," Sanga says, and Bull digs coins out of the satchel at his belt, places them in a stack between her and Dorian. She picks them up, looks at one close, and pockets them, then turns and disappears through the door at the end of the bar.

Bull curls a hand around Dorian's hip, steps in closer while she's gone. "Should get out of here tomorrow or the next day, given how many boats were lined up outside. One of 'em's gotta be headed north. What're you thinking?"

"Bed," Dorian says, and his throat clicks when he swallows his next mouthful of beer. "Drink, and food, and bed."

"Bed?" Bull squeezes his hip. If Dorian wants to carry the tension to Rivain, it's his decision — Bull's gonna give him the option to relieve some of it, though.

Sanga returns from the back room, carrying two plates with bread and cheese and some sort of — bless her old miser soul — dried sausage. She plunks it all down in front of them and crosses her arms while Dorian digs in, looks at Bull until he steps to Dorian's side, foregoes a chair and stands while he eats.

"Where are you headed?"

"North," Bull says between bites, and he moves his hand to catch a bit of cheese he spat out. Fortunately Dorian's too interested in his own food to harass him. "South end of Rivain, if anyone's headed. East's good too."

She narrows her eyes at him, as though she's trying to figure out if he knows what he just gave away. "So Rivain isn't your final destination."

Bull shrugs, isn't gonna spell it out for her without knowing what Dorian's thoughts on telling all and sundry are. Chose the right response too, because Dorian replies, “You’re an intelligent woman, Sanga.”

“ _You_ think you’re lying, but you’re right,” Sanga says, but doesn’t press the issue. “There’s nobody headed east. We’ve got a merchant in from Dairsmuid whose return trip is scheduled four days from now. He likes the pretty ones.” Dorian grimaces, and she continues, “Or you can sweet talk someone less reputable into leaving for Llomerryn on the morrow. Dock 13.”

“Getting stabbed between the ribs isn’t our final destination either,” Bull says, but Dorian’s damnably silent on the matter, which means that’s what they’re gonna end up doing. Llomerryn, not getting stabbed between the ribs. Ideally. You can never be too careful on that exciting little shitstain of an island (that Dorian _hates_ ).

Dorian tips his head to Sanga, thanks her between bites of bread. She hums, says, “The usual room’s unavailable for the night, but you can take the Blue Room. There’s a smell we can’t get rid of, so it’s yours for the same price. You manage to get rid of whatever died in there, then you can _always_ get it for that price.” She leaves them to it, going to welcome another patron, and Bull and Dorian eat the rest of their meal in silence.

Bull keeps his eye on Dorian, watches the way his shoulders curve forward and his head droops, even while he keeps the tension in his neck, his spine. Bull knows what to do with moods like this, knows Dorian wants to feel grounded first and then lose his ability to think enough to stop worrying; but Bull also knows this may just be how Dorian feels… maybe will keep feeling. Impatient enough to take a risk with Llomerryn’s less than savory population, but nonetheless dreading their arrival the closer they get.

When they've finished their plates and their beer, they keep sitting. Dorian's staring at the bar counter like he's had one too many to drink, but not even the shit they serve in this place would achieve that after one mug. Bull squeezes his shoulder, and Dorian moves with him when Bull pulls his hand away — okay. Bull can work with that.

Bull picks up their packs in one hand, slings them over his shoulder, and then takes Dorian by the wrist. Dorian lets himself be guided out of the main room, down the hall towards what Sanga calls the "Blue Room", which just means it's got blue bedding and a nice view of the water when you open the curtains. Bull gets them inside, locks the door behind them, and drops their packs on the floor before turning to Dorian, tightening his hold on Dorian's wrist.

"You hate Llomerryn," Bull says, and Dorian narrows his eyes but doesn't say anything. "I had to go by myself last time because you refused to step one dainty foot on that island."

Dorian snorts softly, and he closes his eyes. "Dalish and Grim went with you, you big baby."

Nah, he's dissembling. Bull steps closer to him, takes his other wrist in hand. "We don't need to take risks. We go to Dairsmuid, we add a week and a half."

Dorian's shaking his head as soon as Bull mentions Dairsmuid, and he scrapes his teeth against his bottom lip. "I can't..." He breathes in slowly, and rocks a little on his feet, into Bull's space. "We have three weeks ahead of us already, if the weather permits. I can't add another week to that. I won't."

Bull’s not gonna simplify whatever’s going on in Dorian’s head to one thing, but he can’t help how he wants to tease out the parts that equal up to it. Is it that he's concerned something will happen to his mother and the estate? Anxious about returning to Tevinter, or just sick of feeling anxious about returning to Tevinter?

"All right. Llomerryn then. We'll rub some dirt into your skin so you're not so pretty and tie anything valuable to ourselves under our clothes."

"I'm fucking gorgeous when I'm dirty," Dorian says, but there's no real bite to the words. He finally sways enough that he drops his head to Bull's chest, makes a low noise in his throat. "Maker, just help me stop thinking."

There we go. Bull feels genuine physical relief with that request, and tightens his grip on Dorian's wrists for a second before letting him go. Dorian mutters, but then Bull's got his hands on Dorian's hips, one sliding back to where his thigh meets his ass, and he lifts Dorian up, carries him to the bed. He lays him down gently in the center of the bed, kisses his temple. "I'm gonna get some stuff, kadan. Just take me a few minutes."

Dorian frowns but nods, his eyes still closed, and Bull feels so fucking trusted in that moment that the emotion almost overwhelms him. He stands beside the bed for too long, just looking down at Dorian’s troubled expression, and breathes out slowly, pulls himself together. Heads over to the dressing table and the shelf of accoutrements.

The room definitely stinks of something, but then neither of them have fully bathed in a week so whatever it is has been masked in a heavy dose of _l’eau de voyageur_. As long as it doesn’t distract Dorian, Bull’s gonna leave it alone.

He checks the lock on the door, crosses the room to check the window too, and draw the curtains tight. Sanga must’ve set up a lamp for them, and he adjusts the wick where it sits on the dressing table, pulls cloths from one of the drawers, a jar of some kind of lotion — he tugs the lid off, smells nice, sort of woodsy — and carries them to the table at the side of the bed. Dorian’s face turns towards the sound of him, but he stays silent, eyes closed… _fuck_. Bull gets back to the dressing table, fast.

He pours water from the pitcher there into the offered bowl… doesn’t take it straight back to the side table though. He looks over the shelves and whistles low under his breath. Never let anybody say the Pearl’s not prepared for every request that might come up. He’s not particularly willing to trust the hygiene of any of the toys laid out — especially with whatever’s stinking it up in here — but he grabs the pile of scarves, silk maybe, then the bowl, and returns to Dorian.

“Sit up, babe, we’re gonna get your robe off.”

Dorian makes a disgruntled noise but sits up, and he does open his eyes now, but only to glare down at the buckles and snaps across his chest. “Why do I dress like this.” Some of them start to undo themselves, one of Dorian’s favorite basic tasks to perform with his magic, but his hands stutter over the rest. Bull kneels on the side of the bed, gently tugs Dorian’s hands away, replaces them with his own — fingers almost too-large, but still workable.

“Now I know you’re out of it. You love your weird clothes.”

“Well, get a good long look at them. Once we arrive in Qarinus it’ll be black and gold with bloody _spikes_ everywhere. You’ll try and hug me and get stabbed through the chest by an epaulet.”

Bull laughs softly, and Dorian falls silent as Bull finishes, guides Dorian’s arms out of the leather, drops the robe onto the floor next to the mattress. Dorian starts to lie back and Bull stops him with a hand at his shoulder blades. Dorian watches curiously as Bull collects one of the scarves, then looks straight ahead when he returns.

“Watchword,” Bull says, and Dorian replies easily, “Archon.”

Bull folds the scarf, loops it over Dorian’s eyes and around his head. He ties it carefully behind Dorian’s head, doesn’t snag any of his precious hair. Bull ducks down and kisses the skin just below Dorian’s ear, drinks in the sound Dorian makes.

He drops one of the cloths into the washing bowl, wrings it out, and sits half on the bed, steadies Dorian with one hand at his hip and drags the cloth across his neck, his back. Dorian’s head falls forward between his shoulders, and Bull washes him carefully, slowly. He lifts each of Dorian’s arms, washes him to the wrist, kisses the gooseflesh rising up just above his elbow.

He guides Dorian onto his back and repeats the motions across his chest, in time with his deep, staggered breaths. He grabs another scarf once he’s finished, lifts Dorian’s arms above his head, and ties them together at the wrists. He squeezes Dorian’s hands once he’s tied, and Dorian squeezes back. Good.

Bull changes out the cloth, grabs the jar of lotion and another scarf, and moves to the end of the bed. He removes Dorian’s boots, his stockings, and washes his feet, kisses the arches of Dorian’s soles. Dorian sighs out a laugh at the sensation, and Bull pinches one of his big toes. On a better day, Dorian would probably kick him in the face, ha. He uncaps the lotion and massages it into Dorian’s tired feet, gets a low whimper when he digs his thumb in. He can fucking _see_ Dorian relax, sinking into the mattress above him. By the time he’s done, Dorian’s lying loose enough that Bull has to hold his feet together to tie his ankles.

He ignores the ache in his leg and back when he stands, and squeezes each of Dorian’s feet. Dorian does his damnedest to move both of them in response.

“Be right back.” He leaves everything at the end of the bed and rifles through his pack, finds his ream of parchment and his fountain pen. He swaps the washing bowl with the lamp, and settles on the bed next to Dorian — who’s lowered his arms, bound wrists curled against his chest — turns on his side almost immediately, presses against Bull before going still again.

Dorian breathes slow, even, and Bull writes his first letter to Lavellan and Krem, reporting their current path. It’s not long before Dorian’s weight next to him on the bed is heavy with sleep, and Bull moves enough to cradle Dorian’s head in the curve of his elbow. He’ll untie Dorian when he’s done, once he’s sure Dorian’s well and truly asleep.

 _We’re bound for Llomerryn tomorrow_ , he writes, _and if we’re lucky we won’t be mugged and left for dead in a back alley._ Dorian shifts in his grip but doesn’t wake. Bull presses his palm against the small of Dorian’s back. Grounding him. That’s his job.

_Verdict’s out on whether that’d still be better than arriving in Tevinter._


	3. Chapter 3

The captain and crew of the _Lady Luck_ aren’t precisely who Dorian would deem decent folk, but they’re also reservedly impressed enough by Bull that neither he nor Dorian should die in their sleep. They accept half of their payment when Bull and Dorian board, with the understanding that upon safe arrival in Llomerryn they’ll receive the rest.

Dorian knows nothing about boats. He’s been on too many in his life, and each one’s just as miserable as the rest — the only differences he’s observed between one or the other is how much the owner’s spent to make it seem like you’re not in the middle of the fucking sea. But this one seems well-maintained, and moves fast and smooth over the water. He assumes they’re smugglers, taking their cargo to Llomerryn to disperse to assorted criminals.

They expect the journey to take five days, as long as the wind keeps up. Dorian spends most of it below deck, the spray off the Amaranthine Sea unforgivingly cold. Bull gets along with the crew because of course he does — no, likely because Bull’s made it a point to pay attention, to figure out how to act to ingratiate himself to them most successfully. He’s always been quite the showman when the situation calls for it; in this case, it will ensure they’re not harassed.

Dorian’s grateful — it gives him time to sort through his thoughts, effectively calmed by the night at the Pearl, but not eliminated. He writes, in a journal he sacrificed important pack space to bring, with one of Bull’s fountain pens, and ostensibly it’s a letter to Maevaris, but he’ll never send it. She’d be utterly underwhelmed by the majority of his fears, by the thought that something about him has irrevocably changed since he left years ago; and that upon returning, that new Dorian, the man he’s worked tirelessly to become, will shatter beyond repair.

 _You control who you are_ , she’d tell him loftily, but sincerely… He’ll have a hard time looking at her and not thinking of Krem, of how trying to control who you are could go so arse-over-teakettle if you didn’t have the power necessary to disregard other people’s opinions.

 _I control who I am_ , he writes anyway, as though thinking it will make it so.

Bull joins him every night, tucked away in a corner of the bunks. On the last night, Bull sits down next to him on their shared cot and grabs Dorian by the hips, moves him bodily across his lap. Dorians smacks him on the shoulder but leans against his chest, listens to Bull’s steady breathing.

“Tomorrow’s Llomerryn,” Bull says unnecessarily, and Dorian studies his face, brushes his fingertips against the bits of silver in Bull’s stubble.

Bull lifts an eyebrow at him, and Dorian sighs, lays his cheek against Bull’s collarbone. “The closer we are to Tevinter, the sooner we need to establish your alias.”

“Mine and yours both,” Bull corrects, and Dorian nods. _I control who I am_.

Bull continues, “So you’ve got yourself a Tal-Vashoth, saved him from his madness and trained him up right. Brought him back to Tevinter to be a proper slave.”

Dorian grimaces, but thinks it over. It could work. Most _Qunari_ believe that Tal-Vashoth are mindless — it shouldn’t be difficult to convince any Tevinter of the same. Still… “Then you’re my pet.”

Bull nods. “Your very own oxman.”

Dorian jerks his head off of Bull’s chest, glares at his damnably calm expression. He opens his mouth, some protest on the tip of his tongue, he’s not even sure of what exactly — when Bull interrupts him. “And you’re gonna have to train yourself out of that reaction. You remember how people treated their slaves when you were growing up? That’s how you treat me. That’s how everybody else is gonna treat me.”

Dorian shoves himself up and off of Bull, strides away from their bunk and stops, tapping his feet on the boards, flexing his fingers at his sides. If he were on anything _not_ made of pitch wood, he’d find some place to loose the nervous energy that’s crept up on him. As it is, there are a dozen other people on this ship, a handful of feet above them, and he’s trapped for another 12 hours in one place. Maker, why did he ever think any of this was a good idea.

“This was my choice, kadan.”

He whips around to face Bull, who’s looking at him with such… devotion, perhaps. _Kadan_. Where Bull’s heart lies. “Remind me of that, after I’m forced to treat you like shit I’ve trodden upon accidentally.”

“I will,” Bull says, simple as that.

“I love you,” Dorian replies, and Bull smiles at him, pats his knee until Dorian comes back to him.

 

==

 

They arrive in Llomerryn and the crew lets them off without any particular incident, aside from their asking for additional coin for “the amount of food the large one put away”. Bull pays them the initially agreed-upon amount and towers over them until they wish them a good day. Dorian smiles at the captain with teeth. Bull tugs him off into the crowd bustling around the dock, so many faces and languages and, ugh, smells.

"Still divvying up responsibilities?" Bull asks, once they've stopped in an alcove to the side of a fishmonger.

Dorian waves his hand in front of his nose. "Don't they know that if it smells like that, you shouldn't eat it?"

Bull rolls his eyes. "You scout out what you need. Meet me here in two hours. Good?"

Dorian nods, and when Bull turns to go, Dorian grabs him by the hand — Bull stops immediately, looks back at him. Dorian breathes out, tightens his grip. "Kiss me."

Bull holds his gaze for too long a time, and then steps in close, shoving Dorian against the mud brick wall behind him. Bull slides his hands around each side of Dorian's neck and leans in close. Dorian sees a finely-dressed woman just over the curve of Bull's arm staring at the two of them, stopped in her tracks, expression intrigued, and Dorian feels a thrill climb up his spine.

"Kiss me," Dorian demands, and he reaches up for one of Bull's horns and pulls him into the kiss. He will have this, he's allowed this — one last time to scandalize onlookers. He licks along the seam of Bull's lips and Bull laughs soft, loving, against his mouth. _Loving_. Dorian doesn't doubt that.

"Getting it in while you can?" Bull whispers quietly between them, and Dorian kisses Bull quickly on the cheek, pushes him away and tries to swallow the smile struggling its way onto his face, in response to Bull's lummox grin.

Bull keeps close, keeps looking at him, and his expression doesn't so much fall as twist into something sadder, somehow... dearer. "We'll still be us under everything." He steps back, swipes his thumb over Dorian's chin. "Now go find yourself some awful clothes. Don't get stabbed."

"Yes, thank you." Dorian shoves Bull out of his way, looks back at him over his shoulder once or twice as he descends into the utter squalor of Llomerryn's market district.

==

This island is a blight upon the face of the world, Dorian understands. Every world needs one, a den of thieves and villains, where the underhanded and under-educated go when they're no longer content with being used as footstools by the elite. There's a reason he didn't accompany Bull on the previous outing to Llomerryn — he's become infinitely less discriminating over the years, cares far less about things that were once as important as gospel… but he's still _himself_.

He stands in front of a display of obviously stolen and counterfeit goods, and prays for patience. One of the tunics has _blood_ dried into it. _Lovely fineries you've come to us in, Dorian. Did the previous owner suffer too terribly?_ ... Actually, that may impress his mother.

He purchases shoes, worn but well-made, and slides them into his pack. He finds stockings, haggard-looking trousers for Bull. He suspects asking around for chains would be _gauche_ — and anyway, wouldn't everyone be so impressed by his having the qunari beast so well-trained as to not require them? How impressive, Magister Pavus. Look at him follow you. He must _worship_ you.

Dorian pauses in the market, in the middle of the bustling crowd, his heart hammering in his chest hard enough at the vileness of that thought that he worries for one moment he may suffocate.

He breathes in, slowly, and purges the damned thought from his mind. There must be hundreds of people here, each of them living out their equally insignificant life. None of them find him the least bit interesting. None of them care one whit about him. _Turn your focus outward._

There's a girl next to a table of fancy nuts, chocolates, who's been slowly pocketing bits of each; what she doesn't realize is that the shopkeeper knows, looks up at her every once in a while — doesn't smile, but doesn't stop her, either.

There's a man and woman busking down the way, a hat turned upside down on the cobblestones in front of them; it has a smattering of coins inside of it, a reasonable amount given their performance. A man stands across from them, claps his hands in time to the rhythm of the music, but he hasn't taken his eyes off of the hat. Dorian expects he'll steal it within the next few minutes, perhaps while the musicians are deciding what next to play. He'll get away with it, too; though he's dressed poorly, he's well-fed. It's unlikely that it’s desperation that brings him to this, so he’ll have some level of skill.

Dorian closes his eyes, presses his palm against his chest. It's almost like having Bull beside him, whispering the observations in his ear. That's how it will be in Qarinus as well. Dorian will be adrift from him, and anchored by him all the same.

He moves deeper into the market, where there are fewer stands, more actual shops. Businessmen, not street peddlers, and fewer people. The sign above one curtain-covered door catches his eye — the head of a dragon, breathing fire. He slips inside and feels suddenly as though he had never left Tevinter.

The shop is dark, the curtain nearly blocking out the searing outside sun, and there are balls of flame ensconced on each of the walls. An older woman, a Rivaini hedgewitch surely, stands amidst the aesthetically sparse racks of clothing, tunics and robes and trousers, black on gold on black. She latches onto him when he enters, approaching him quickly, a polite smile twisting up her rouged lips.

“And how may I assist you this fine day, serah?”

He returns her smile and dredges up charm he doesn’t feel, waves at her wares. “I’ve been in the south for a dismally long time, my dear. As you can see from the state of my clothes, I’m in dire need of a touch of home.”

She nods at him, and together they outfit him in leather and brocade, a different kind of armor than he’s become accustomed to wearing. She directs him to a mirror once they’ve arrived at something they both like, and he stares at himself for an inappropriate amount of time, lifts an arm — Andraste’s tits, as though he needs to confirm that the man before him is truly himself.

He’d grown the moustache to distance his appearance from his father’s, but there’s little denying it now — he’s clearly Halward Pavus’s son. Maybe he’ll grow out his hair, stop shaving altogether.

It only occurs to him to wonder why a well-established shop in Llomerryn caters to a Tevinter clientele when someone else enters, greets the proprietor by name, and walks over to Dorian. It’s the woman from earlier, who watched Dorian and Bull in the market. She beelines straight for him. Oh buggering fuck.

Closer, it’s clear she’s not Rivaini even though she’s dark-skinned — not with that nose. Her clothing is finely-made, a high-quality weave of green and black once she’s close enough for Dorian to see. When she opens her mouth and Tevene spills out, Dorian’s stomach begins to twist itself into knots.

“I wasn’t certain, but I’ve found you here, and so it must be. Lucretia of House Orosius.”

Dorian turns to her, inclines his head, smiles with all he’s got. She’s approached him because she wants something, because she sees an opportunity. She has incriminating information about him, and she wants to know if it’s worth using. “It’s my pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lucretia. Dorian of House Pavus.”

Her eyes widen — actual surprise, or theatrics? He should know that. It’s a problem that he can’t tell — and she places her hand on his bare arm. “My condolences. We were surprised to hear of your father’s unfortunate passing. My mother spoke fondly of him, from their time in the Magisterium together.”

Dorian lets himself wince. She’ll think it’s because of his father, and not due to her recognizing him. No one in Tevinter knows why he left — his parents wouldn’t dare humiliate themselves by exposing the failed ritual — but he’s certain his time with the Inquisition and after has not gone unremarked upon; and there’s also the small matter of her observing Dorian with a qunari. “You’re very kind.”

The shopkeeper interrupts them then, and Dorian pays her for the clothing, almost asks her to dispose of his old clothes before reconsidering, shoving them into his pack. Lucretia waits for him, and they walk back out into the sun together, as though they were friends.

“You’re returning to Qarinus then?” she asks, and Dorian nods as they head towards the docks. If nothing else, he can part with her back in the busy market, insist he must locate his slave. He _must_ part with her. He and Bull had discussed that the time on that damned boat was their last moment together as themselves, but that was a precaution. He’s not ready for it, so soon.

"Of course. There's only so much gallivanting one may do as a young man before one must take up the yoke."

She laughs, sounding thoroughly charmed, and wraps her arm around his as they enter the market. She's too damn smart, clearly knows what game they’re playing now. Even if she has no precise goal in mind, securing secrets about a new magister must have its uses.

"Your slave, where did he get to?"

They're approaching the docks now, and Dorian prays silently that Bull's still caught up in negotiating their passage, that he won't come barreling towards him with a loutish grin on his face, pleased to have found a good deal — his mouth is dry, his throat clicking as he swallows, and Lucretia is saying something Dorian isn't paying attention to when the voice Dorian loves above all others comes from behind him, less emotion in it than Dorian's heard in a while.

"Master Dorian."

Dorian feels violently ill, but he turns, Lucretia staying at his side. Bull's head is lowered deferentially, his hands clasped behind his back.

"Well, out with it, ox," Dorian says. He may as well be chewing glass for how the words feel falling from his mouth. Bless Bull's skill — how quickly he can read a situation and respond accordingly. Dorian can barely keep up the charade already, wants to apologize immediately. Maker, why did he think this would be simple.

"Two ships are departing for Qarinus, one on the morrow and the next in two days' time. Merchants, both of them."

"Incredible," Lucretia says, and Dorian can see the smile stretching her face from his peripheral vision. "I've never seen one who could speak trade so eloquently. Wherever did you pick him up?"

There's a fine line to walk here. Bull doesn't know she saw them, may think Dorian simply stumbled upon a Tevinter while browsing. But perhaps Bull understands something of it, with how Dorian hasn’t yet dismissed her.

“Within the rank and file of the Inquisition, if you’d believe it,” Dorian says with a laugh. He carefully withdraws from Lucretia’s grip and steps closer to Bull, a polite dismissal, if she’s willing to accept it. Maker, please let her accept it. “Damn good at anything I ask him to take care of, as you see. I’m sure we’ll cross ways back home soon enough. It was wonderful to make your acquaintance.”

She’s skeptical, he can see it in the narrowing of her eyes. Fuck, why did she have to be smart? Dorian remembers just wave upon wave of shallow-headed younger alti, never a thought between their ears, sashaying about society balls being pretty and little else.

“We’re departing just this evening — delicate cargo, you know. I’ve a fine ship, far more suited to a magister. Won’t you accompany me as my guest?”

She expects him to say no, he can see it in her smile. And if he says no, then she’ll arrive in Qarinus before him, and have full reign to disseminate any information she sees fit, to whomever she wishes. Dorian has generated enough rumors himself, without help from gossipmongers. He never lets the smile leave his face, and hopes, with a fervor bordering on desperate, that Bull will understand.

“A gracious offer, Lucretia. I would be honored.” He looks over his shoulder at Bull, whose face is blank, reactionless. “And to where may I send my man?”

Lucretia’s own smile is pleased, shows her teeth. She clasps her manicured hands in front of her, and inclines her head. “My ship is docked at pier 7, down the way. Your beast can make himself comfortable with the crew.” She looks at Bull, and Dorian wants nothing more than to stand between them. An idiot’s desire. “And you _must_ come with me, Dorian, they’ve the most delightful pastries at this little hovel of a shop up the pier. They’ll remind you what you’ve missed with only that Ferelden muck to eat for years.”

“That sounds simply wonderful.” Dorian turns to Bull and passes over his pack, tries to convey the myriad emotions roiling through him in a single look — which Bull doesn’t respond to, he can’t of course, but it stings regardless. "Don't get lost, will you."

Bull nods, gives him a gruff _yes, master_ , and turns to stalk down the pier towards the ship. Dorian breathes out slowly and returns to Lucretia, and she guides him to whatever fucking shop she'd been talking about.

 

==

 

“’Within the rank and file of the Inquisition,’” Lucretia says in between polite bites of her flaking pastry, her narrowed brown eyes taking in every reaction on Dorian’s face.

Unfortunately for her, Dorian’s been trained by the best, and knows he lets nothing through. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? There’s something truly special about a Tal-Vashoth: they’re always looking for something to guide them, to cling to. Their absurd religion sets them up for you — they’re absolutely begging for something to follow.”

He’s not sure if she believes him. She’s too smart to take him at his word, but she seems willing to entertain it for now, since the next thing out of her mouth is, “What’s it like to bed one?”

Dorian grins, forces himself to think of something funny — the day he discovered Krem’s sewing — so it makes it to his eyes. That moment in the market means nothing if Dorian plays it right. “I don’t kiss and tell, even with my pet. I wouldn’t want you to have any reason to try and steal him away. Still, in a word: _powerful_.”

She blinks at him, slowly, and then she laughs. Dorian feels the weight start to lift from his shoulders, incrementally.

They eat, and they share stories of the south, of the barbarism of Ferelden, though Dorian learns that Lucretia adores mabari.

“I wanted to bring one home,” she admits, “but I couldn’t figure out how I would explain it to Mother. You’re lucky that you’re coming home to such a vacancy; no one will have the nerve tell you to get rid of your ox.”

Dorian chuckles, carefully processing how he _wants_ to respond with how he _should_ , and moving the former to the back of his mind to be unpacked later. “There’s also the fact I could have him gore people with his horns.”

“ _Infinitely_ better than a mabari,” Lucretia agrees, and orders more wine.

 

=

 

Lucretia leads him to her ship after they’ve eaten and drunk their fill, and he makes the appropriate impressed noises upon seeing it. She introduces him to her captain, a strapping young gent named Luca who’s quite delectable in his jerkin, and gives him a tour of the vessel — he stops paying attention a few seconds into it, but she seems to find him charming regardless.

She instructs her men to start them off, and Dorian stands with her at the railing and watches Llomerryn grow smaller in the distance. When the sun begins to set behind them, Lucretia places her hand on Dorian’s arm, tilts her head towards the stairs. “Let me show you to your cabin. I’m sure your pet’s already been relocated there.”

Dorian thanks her, and watches his step as they go below deck. It’s mercifully cooler here, and she leads him around support beams to a door, before which she stops and turns to him. “It’s truly my pleasure having you with me during this journey,” she says, and Dorian would nod but his head feels particularly heavy, and he’s not interested in embarrassing himself.

“You were very kind to offer,” he replies, and with a smile she opens the door for him.

“We’ve breakfast sharply at 9 every morning in my cabin at the stern of the ship. Please do join me.”

He clasps her shoulder, and she leaves him to his cabin and — Bull, praise Andraste, who steps aside to let Dorian into the cabin, shuts the door behind him and locks it promptly.

“You’re drunk,” Bull says, standing in front of the door.

Dorian scoffs, and glares at Bull before starting to undress himself. The room’s quite nice if small, all dark woods and heavy fabrics. The bed looks divine, even rocking as it is. “Not even a bit.”

“You are,” Bull says, and helps Dorian get out of his new clothing. Dorian’s simply not used to any of it yet, all the layers, it’s been years. It’s lovely though, Bull’s hands close to him, after that show they had to put on. His hands are comforting, help to quell the knot in Dorian’s stomach.

Bull takes the over-clothing, leaving Dorian in his plain tunic and smallclothes to stow everything in the built-in dresser across from the bed. “Did she tell you what she’s doing in Llomerryn?”

Dorian’s distracted by the breadth of Bull’s shoulders. It takes him a moment to parse what Bull said. “What?”

“The cargo on this ship. D’you know what it is?” Bull turns to him, and he looks angry, not at Dorian thankfully — Dorian’s not sure he could handle that after the last few hours. Bull’s surely not been on a picnic, but if Dorian has to ameliorate anything for the next six hours he might scream.

“Something profitable, I’d imagine,” he says, walking slowly over to the dressing table on the opposite side of the bed as the dresser. He leans over the chair, getting a good look of himself in the mirror. The humidity’s absolutely _wrecked_ his makeup. “An altus wouldn’t leave home for anything less. She’d delegate it out.”

“Right. The cargo’s people.”

Dorian turns, grabbing the top of the chair behind him to steady himself. “What?”

Bull leans against the dresser, crossing his arms over his chest. He’s very nearly too tall to stand safely here. “This is a fucking slaver ship, Dorian.”

“You’re not—.” Dorian pulls out the chair and sits, hard. Maybe he is drunk, because he feels nauseous; his head hurts, and his stomach feels like it’s pressing up into his lungs. “This is… a slaver ship.” He covers his mouth with a hand, pressing his eyes closed. He almost asks if Bull is sure, but realizes that’s idiotic. Of course Bull is sure. “Shit.”

“Did you get anything from her?”

“Her mother is Magister Orosius, a friend of my father’s. It’s why… one of the reasons why I didn’t turn her away when she accosted me in the market.”

Bull heaves a sigh, and when Dorian opens his eyes, Bull’s rubbing a hand across his face. “Just one?”

“She saw us, when I. When we kissed. I wanted to ensure she wouldn’t spoil our ruse.”

Bull nods, doesn’t look upset with the information. Dorian’s chest seizes when Bull speaks, but he sounds sincere: “All right. Pet and fucktoy. We can work with that.”

It’s awful, truly wretched that Bull doesn’t even look angry, not one whit, and Dorian feels… “You’re right. I _am_ drunk.” He stands, shoves the chair back under the dressing table, and moves to the bed, lying down as quickly as his shaking limbs will allow him.

Bull joins him on the bed, the mattress straining under his bulk. “We’re getting to Qarinus. That’s what we focus on now.” He sounds tired. Dorian wonders what Bull did in the hours Dorian was being entertained by Lucretia, but can’t bring himself to ask right now. He’s not sure he ever wants to know. Selfish of him.

“I’m sorry, for how I treated you today. For how I will treat you.”

Bull’s quiet next to him, and when he slides his arm around Dorian and pulls him closer, Dorian shuts his eyes and carefully says nothing, swallows down the noise that starts in his chest.

“When we arrive,” Bull says, his voice a low rumble in Dorian’s ear, “buy as many of the people on this ship as you can.”

“Yes,” Dorian agrees readily, because it’s the least he can do… but what would Lucretia say, if he did? How would that look? Perhaps he could say it was a token of his gratitude, for safe passage. “I will, amatus.”

Bull tightens his hold on Dorian, and Dorian lets himself try to sleep.

 

==

 

In the morning, he puts on his face and his robes, his armor, and meets Lucretia at breakfast with a smile.


	4. Chapter 4

He's impressed by the way Dorian ingratiates himself to their host; Bull's not naive enough to think she's forgotten their odd behavior from when she observed them — and what a fucking nightmare that is, he should've been on guard — but she seems to have accepted their relationship at face value. Dorian's simply gone soft on his pet, that's all. It must happen all the time.

Dorian spends most of his days with Orosius, shooting the shit or whatever it is you do with a vint asshole. He returns to his cabin at night looking drained, and that plus some half-hearted complaining about the voyage itself are all Bull gets out of him.

Bull's starting to think Dorian is trying to _protect_ him, and when Dorian gets that notion in his head, there's not a lot Bull can do to make him quit it. At least nothing he could make happen on a _boat_.

So he takes the time he has to meet the crew, and try and learn as much as he can about the people kept below deck in shackles. The problem with the former is that none of them are interested in interacting with a slave in any meaningful way — they’re also all just this side of scared of him, which is hilarious, but bad for info-gathering. The problem with the latter is that a qunari, even a Tal-Vashoth, is not necessarily somebody a person in danger wants to confide in. Bull wants to work the slave angle, but at the end of the day he’s on the outside of the bars.

There are over 60 people in the cells at the belly of the boat — Bull knows worse happens, that all things considered they’ve got a lot of room to move, but he’s not giving fucking slavers any kudos. It’s a mixture of elves and humans, mostly elves, and most of ‘em without vallaslin so they’re from cities. Nobody looks older than their mid-30s, and the number of kids there are makes him want to grab one of the cell doors and yank it off its hinges. Dorian would understand.

He ends up spending his days below deck, sitting next to the bars of the cell with the most kids. He broke a chunk of wood off of one of the companionway banisters earlier — they’ll have to repair it once they arrive in Qarinus, serves ‘em right — and grabbed the one weapon they brought with them, a hunting knife. He’s not an old hand at this kind of thing like Blackwall was, but carving’s straightforward, something you can do with your hands when there’s not a lot going on. It’s good if you need to focus yourself, or attract the attention of somebody who doesn’t have a lot to do other than watch you.

He gets a bit of an audience, like he planned — none of the adults seem too interested in the kids, beyond general empathy, so he doesn’t need to worry about pissed off parents trying to protect anybody. One of the kids, a real young one — elves are hard to gauge but he figures she’s under ten — presses her face through the bars to watch him. When he looks up at her she doesn’t shy away. Too young to be afraid of the Qunari, maybe.

He holds the piece of wood up to the patch of light coming down the companionway — it doesn’t look like much of anything right now, maybe the general shape of an animal, four legs, a head and tail — but her big brown eyes follow it anyway, and her dark little fingers curl around the bars below her head.

It’s two full days of him sitting down there and giving himself splinters before she opens her mouths and asks him a question, her voice almost lost in the creaking of the ship.

“What is it?”

Bull doesn’t respond immediately, noticing the way the other captives shift uncomfortably, half of them watching him; the other half, the companionway to see if anyone’s gonna come rushing down. They’ve been quiet enough that he knows the first half of the journey, the part he didn’t see, had to have several examples of what’d happen if someone spoke up. One of the human men, pale with soft, uncalloused hands, has a beaut of a black eye and a broken nose — probably used to people listening to him, and didn’t get the response he expected. There’s an elf girl in her late teens near the back wall who’s cradling her arm and winces every time the boat rocks particularly heavily; he figures her shoulder’s been dislocated. All shit that hurts, but heals, and leaves a lasting impression on everybody present.

“Y’ever seen a dragonling?” Bull asks, and the girl sucks her lower lip into her mouth before pulling back from the bars enough to shake her head. He smiles, and she does drop her head this time, but he can see her smile even with her chin pressed against her chest. It’s good, means the bastards who abducted her didn’t make it especially traumatizing. He’s not gonna guess it’s the same for everybody on this boat; she may be standing close, but there are at least four other kids hiding in the shadows of the back of the cell.

Bull shifts where he sits, brushing woodchips off his lap, and holds the wood out in front of him like it’s a toy pony, rocks it back and forth in the air. “They’re baby dragons, right? Spit fire and have teeth like razors, but they’re the size of a druffalo. You ever seen a _druffalo_?”

The girl shakes her head slowly, coming back to the bars. You can’t go by the vallaslin for the kids, but that confirms she’s from an alienage.

“No druffalo where you live?”

She shakes her head again, and looks between his face and the figure. She sticks her hand out between the bars, her fingers curling, and he passes it over to her before she thinks twice about it. She takes the figure and passes it between her hands, running her thumb from the back of its head to the tip of its tail, like she’s petting it.

She sits back on her bottom and folds her arms around the toy — it’s still kind of shitty looking, but apparently it’s still good enough for a kid — and stays quiet for a good three minutes, before she says, “I petted the champion’s dog once when I was real little. He was bigger’n me.”

So, Kirkwall. Makes sense — with Starkhaven starting to harass the city again, he’s not surprised it’d be a place ripe for the picking. You get enough displaced people in a city still struggling to recover after a decade of tumultuous bullshit, and add in unpredictable attacks? Bull wouldn’t be surprised if everyone below deck were Free Marchers.

They sit in silence for a long while, until the girl passes the figure back through the bars. “’M not… I shouldn’t keep it.”

Bull doesn’t let himself think about how abso-fucking-lutely terrible that is, a kid knowing that, and thanks her for it. She doesn’t move away from the bars so he doesn’t either, and they end up sitting there for what must be an hour, before Bull hears footsteps on the companionway and he’s gotta move so he doesn’t look suspicious.

He spends the rest of the day in their cabin, whittling, to keep himself from thinking about how easy it’d be to let the people out in the middle of the night. Slit the throats of the crew on watch, push ‘em overboard. Dorian could take out Orosius with his hands tied behind his back, and then it’d be a matter of offering safe passage to anyone on the crew who was willing to help, killing or imprisoning the ones who weren’t. He could have it organized before week’s end.

Except it’d get back to Tevinter, somehow, and Dorian would be tried for the murder of an altus. It’d be a shitshow from start to finish.

So Bull fucking _whittles_.

Dorian returns sometime after the sun’s dipped below the horizon, toeing off his boots once he’s locked the door behind him. He glances at the figure in Bull’s hands — definitely resembling at least a giant lizard, now — and then sits at the dressing table, starting the process of removing his face for the day. When he’s almost done, he catches Bull’s eye in the mirror. “What are you making?”

Bull lifts the figure to eye level, turns it from side to side. “It’s a dragonling. One of the kids — I haven’t gotten her name yet. But I thought I’d give it to her.”

“Are you getting attached?” Dorian asks, and then stills, lowering his head. He wipes a hand across his face, then shakes his head slowly. “I’m sorry. That was unkind.” He stands and shoulders off his robe, laying it over the dressing table, before sitting down on the edge of the bed. “You were saying?”

“Kids talk a lot more than adults do,” Bull says, and rolls off the other side of the mattress, walking across the small space to the dressing table. She’s a sweet kid, sure — and Bull’s gonna make sure she’s in the group Dorian manages to buy. He’s not ignoring what they’ve got going on, though.

“As far as I can gather, Orosius is a middleman.” Bull sets the carving on the dressing table. He pulls out the chair and sits on it backwards, folding his arms over the chair back and angling his head towards Dorian. “The majority of the people below deck are Free Marchers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we had a couple Fereldens or Orlesians. They were collected by different outfits, brought together in Llomerryn to be transported to Tevinter.”

“She’s a businesswoman,” Dorian says, his lips curling back from his teeth in distaste. “Reaps the profits but doesn’t get her hands dirtier than necessary.”

“Delegated the dangerous parts, yeah.” Which is smart business. Doesn’t change the fact that Bull wants to tie her feet to a barrel of rocks and push her off the edge of the boat.

Dorian breathes out in a huff and presses his eyes closed, hard. He rubs at the back of his neck and then lets both hands fall limp in his lap.

He looks like he’s gearing himself up to say something, so Bull keeps his own mouth shut — not that he knows what to say, not yet. If Dorian’s feeling shitty about this entire thing, then Bull reassuring him he still wants to be here would only make it worse. If Dorian’s trying to figure out how they manage this, then all of Bull’s current suggestions run along the lines of a fucking mutiny. So what he can do is wait, so he does.

Dorian eventually heaves out another breath and stands, grabbing the hem of his undershirt in both hands and pulling it over his head. He drops it on the floorboards and looks up at Bull from under his delicately-groomed brows. He bites his bottom lip, and Bull swallows.

“Imagine we’re on a ship headed anywhere but Tevinter,” Dorian says, and he crosses the little space between the bed and the back of the chair Bull’s straddling. “Can you do that?”

It’s relieving, to be given that out. To have a reason to stop thinking about their trajectory. “Yeah,” Bull replies, and doesn’t let his eye linger too long on all the skin available to him, looking up at Dorian’s face as soon as he’s close.

“Good.” Dorian wraps a hand around one of Bull’s horns, gentle, rubbing his thumb back and forth across the smooth surface. He licks his lips. “Can you help me to?”

Bull frowns. “Dorian…”

“No,” Dorian interrupts, and for a brief moment he glares, lifting his chin haughtily — frigging gorgeous, if Bull’s honest, an expression he’s not seen in too damn long — before his face relaxes into a careful smile. “I am exhausted. I’m out of practice, and I’m no longer the politician I once was.”

“My fault, really,” Bull says, and it catches Dorian off-guard — he laughs, the smile on his face curving into something real.

“Undoubtedly,” he agrees, and slides his hand down Bull’s horn until his fingers brush against skin. They’re cold against Bull’s temple, and it sends a thrill down his spine, makes him sit up straighter. “I am tired, of Lucretia’s sly intelligence and of my own barely-competent fumblings at the behavior suited to one of my station, and I would like to do something enjoyable for a change of pace.”

Bull unfolds his arms from the back of the chair, reaching forward to hold Dorian at the hips. It’s been years and this still makes something fierce and powerful swell in his chest — when Dorian opens up to him like this, when Dorian _wants_ him. “Yeah?”

“There are probably dozens of things I should be doing right now,” Dorian continues — and there’s a second when he thinks about that, Bull can see it on his face before he beats it back — and scrapes his nails at where Bull’s skin gives way to horn. Bull closes his eye, pressing into the feeling. Dorian makes a pleased sound. “But what I’d like is for you to fuck me until I scream.”

Bull lets himself grin, tilting his head into Dorian’s roving fingers. “Selfish bastard, aren’t you.”

“ _One_ of us has to think about the important things.” And fuck if that doesn’t do it for Bull, Dorian strung out but still him, teasing and demanding all at once, with just a hint of sincere self-importance.

Bull works at the ties on either side of Dorian’s smallclothes, opening his eye to look up at him again, and thinks about the important things.

Dorian knows he’s gorgeous, takes pride in his appearance and devotes time to his presentation. He’s accepted aging: the lines starting to take hold around his eyes and mouth; and the few bits of gray in his hair that Bull always points out with glee. Bull learned fast that he could compliment Dorian’s looks easy, but then he’d be like anybody else — anybody could do that. Dorian liked it, sure, but it wasn’t a shock to him. So Bull figured out other angles, what Dorian wouldn’t expect: thanked him for the work he’d done improving the selection of Skyhold’s library; complimented his staff-handling, innuendo aside, and had him lead the boys in training until they could pick up a stick off the side of the road and trip each other _skillfully_ ; asked him to lead deal negotiations and talk his way into their signing on with a handful more of coin to pocket.

“I think you’re good,” Bull says, and Dorian arches an eyebrow at him, pursing his lips. “You’re good,” Bull repeats, and he lets Dorian’s smallclothes fall to the floor. He pushes himself up from the chair and moves around it, turning Dorian towards him, taking him by the hips again. “That’s one of my important things. That’s what I’m thinking about: how people hand you shit and you know you can turn it into gold.”

“Now I’m delusional.” Dorian rolls his eyes, stopping when Bull steps in close, chest to chest.

“Nah,” Bull says, and he tips his forehead against Dorian’s. Dorian shuts his eyes. “You’re good.”

Dorian is still against him, still and quiet, until he shudders, and loops his arms around Bull’s shoulders, pressing his nails into Bull’s back. “Fuck me,” he commands, and Bull pushes him onto the bed.

Dorian sits up enough to grab at Bull's belt, and then at the waistband of his trousers; when they drop to Bull's knees, Dorian seems to think that's good enough, grabbing Bull's shoulder and pulling him down. Bull goes with it — loves when Dorian gets handsy.

"I think about you all day," Dorian seethes in between kisses. Bull lets him set the tone, and Dorian's going for hard and fast, going to end up with bruises. "I talk about plans for the estate. What I'll do with the fortune I'm sure my parents have sat upon. I told her I'm considering diversifying the family business. And the entire time I lie through my teeth I'm thinking about you."

Bull bites Dorian's lips, drags his mouth down Dorian's chin, over his neck. "That's pretty kinky." He gets low enough above Dorian's chest that he knows Dorian's clothes, even the new ones, will cover anything he does, and he fits his mouth over tan skin, sucks it up between his teeth, drinking in Dorian's sudden moan over the sting of it. Dorian's hands curl around his horns — Bull gives Dorian his full attention, but they aren't pulling him off, so he keeps at it, moves his mouth down to Dorian's stomach.

Dorian's ticklish, just a little, so Bull lays his hands across Dorian's sides, firm and steady. Dorian rocks his hips up, once, and Bull laughs against the trail of curling hair leading down to his eager dick. "Thought you wanted me to fuck you."

"You're _already there_ ," Dorian says, and Bull laughs again, and circles his hand around the base of Dorian's pretty cock, squeezes once and slides his hand up to the tip, running his thumb across the glans in a way Dorian hates because it makes him make — yeah, that sound, sort of a high-pitched gasp.

Dorian steers his head down, hands still on Bull's horns. " _Please_." And you don't say no to that.

Bull licks Dorian's cock into his mouth, slow and gentle, keeping his hold on Dorian's sides so Dorian can't set the pace. Dorian knows Bull can take all of him, _loves_ it when he does, and Bull likes teasing him for that exact reason. Likes sucking Dorian’s dick like he’s exploring it, getting a feel for it. It drives Dorian frigging off his rocker, and Bull loves that moment of desperation when Dorian digs one of his heels into Bull's back, almost rips the sheets with one of his hands.

"Fuck me, _fuck me_ ," Dorian snarls, but his hips keep jerking up, his cock sliding into Bull's mouth. It's only when he's close, when Bull feels Dorian's legs starting to shake, that Bull pulls off of him. Dorian keeps shuddering, like he's stuck in the beginnings of his orgasm, and Bull leans back enough to watch it, get a good eyeful. It's like Dorian’s got a bolt of electricity going through him, each set of muscles tightening in turn, and his shuddering pants shoot through Bull's veins like a shot of single malt.

Bull spits on his palm then loops his hand around his own dick and strokes. Keeps stroking until Dorian settles down and opens his eyes, half-lidded and dark, to watch Bull.

“Don’t come,” Dorian commands hazily, and Bull looks up at him, at his parted lips, his blown pupils.

“You in any state to tell me what to do?” Bull lets go of his dick anyway, moving to straddle Dorian’s thighs. They don’t have anything — not enough pack space to bring oils just for sex, and Bull knows if he uses Dorian’s fancy Orlesian hair stuff that Dorian’ll gut him tomorrow when he has his wit’s about him — so he spits on his palm, sliding his hand down between Dorian’s legs. “Cross your ankles, babe.”

Dorian whimpers, dropping his head back onto the mattress, and he does what Bull tells him to, closing the space between his thighs. “Good boy,” Bull tells him, dragging a thumb across Dorian’s balls, then back to push against his perineum. “So good for me. Look at you, so eager for my dick.”

Dorian nods, unashamed of it, and reaches up to hook his hands over the top edge of the mattress. Bull has to close his eyes for a second so that sight doesn’t fucking overwhelm him. He leans down and kisses Dorian, licks into his mouth and moans when Dorian strains up against him. “So good, remembering what I like,” Bull says against his lips. He leans his weight onto one elbow while he reaches down between them, angling his cock just right, slipping between Dorian’s thighs and pressed firmly against the underside of his balls.

Dorian clenches his thighs and Bull curses, dropping his other arm to the mattress for support. “You gonna think about this tomorrow, when you think about me?” He rocks his hips and Dorian shudders underneath him, tipping his head back. Bull bites the side of his neck, just hard enough to sting. “Look at me, Dorian.”

“ _Shit,_ ” Dorian pants when he lowers his chin, dropping his eyes back to Bull. One of his arms lifts a good foot from the bed before he jerks it back down, wrenching the sheet between his fingers to help him keep his grip. “ _Bull_.”

“So good, kadan,” Bull tells him, kissing the side of his chin. He can feel Dorian’s cock hard and leaking between them when he rocks down — he focuses on that instead of what Dorian keeping his own fucking hands restrained is doing to him. “You wanna come?”

Dorian’s arms tremble. He goes between tilting his head up and jerking it back down, so he keeps looking at Bull like Bull told him to — and fuck if that alone, more than the sweet pressure on Bull’s dick, is what’s gonna get Bull in the end.

“Come for me, baby.” Bull drives his hips down, keeps ‘em low so every roll hits Dorian’s cock, pressed between their stomachs. Dorian gasps, biting hard on his bottom lip, and his eyes stay open and locked on Bull’s when he comes.

It hits Bull like a punch to the gut and he drops his head to Dorian’s neck, fucks between Dorian’s thighs with that sight burned into the front of his brain. Dorian’s still shaking, his hands still wrapped in the sheets at the top of the bed, but he’s babbling at Bull, _fuck me_ and _please_ and _amatus,_ and that does it — Bull smothers a shout against Dorian’s shoulder and shudders through his orgasm while his fucking arms give out.

They lay like that, Bull covering Dorian like a frigging blanket, until Bull figures Dorian’s probably getting crushed and is just too fucked-out to complain about it. He pushes himself up onto an elbow and starts to shift to the side, onto the mattress — except then he’s got a leg wrapping around his hips, one hand around his neck and the other gripping a horn.

“Stay,” Dorian whispers, voice hoarse. Bull lifts a brow at him, and Dorian shakes his head, tightening his hold.

“Stay,” he repeats, so Bull does.

 

==

 

The kid’s name is Amelia, and though she always hands the dragonling back to Bull when he leaves, even once he’s finished carving it, it’s hers and she knows it. She names it Mary, and tells him Mary likes to sing and read books and grow flowers. Bull just ends up hoping whoever Mary is, she’s not lying dead in some Kirkwall back alley.

After the first week, the other captives start to warm up to him. Most of them aren't _comfortable_ with him, per se, but they don't outright ignore him anymore. He confirms that most of 'em are Fre Marchers, but the man with the broken nose is Orlesian, and he hears a couple Ferelden accents when he's greeted in the morning.

The worst part is the rest of the kids.

Dorian agreed to buying as much of the "cargo" as he can get away with when they arrive, but there's no way to tell Orosius that they want all the kids without it seeming suspicious. So he'll make sure they get Amelia, and hope for the best otherwise. It's shitty.

"Have you been to Tevinter?"

Bull looks up from his second carving — it's gonna be a bear this time; he's already told Amelia its name is Cassandra — to see the girl with the dislocated shoulder watching him. He shrugs, nodding. "Yeah. I've been there."

"With your... master?"

That distinction makes him suspicious. Besides, he's gotta be careful here: there's the truth, and then there's what would make sense for who he's supposed to be. Kid doesn't need to know the intricacies of it, but Bull's at least going to need to make it consistent. "No. Before I met him."

"Before...?" She shifts on the floor, wincing when she resettles, and Bull looks at her for a long while. She's injured, but she's smart; and Bull wouldn't put offering rewards to captives for info-gathered past Orosius. Seems like it'd be right up her alley, actually.

"Yeah," Bull says, and stays silent when she asks him if he's been to Qarinus, because she shouldn't know where they're headed. A couple of the other adults who’re paying attention look curiously at her, too.

She's a smart kid, but didn't think through how unlikely it'd be for Orosius to actually hold up her end of the bargain, get her whatever Orosius promised her. Smart, but naive.

When Bull comes by the next day, her arm's been broken. Bull keeps his expression neutral, and doesn't think about the way that knifes through his gut. He could’ve… warned her, maybe. Damnit.

By a week and a half into the voyage, Orosius apparently tires enough of Dorian that he ends up wandering around the ship, coming down to collect Bull when that too bores him. Bull _yes masters_ and _no masters_ , and Dorian's gotten better at hiding his responding flinch. Dorian reads from a book he borrowed from Orosius, and Bull gives Amelia Cassandra the bear, and nobody asks Bull any more questions.

 

==

 

He’s on deck, letting the sun beat against his back while he leans across the railing, when the call comes down from the crow’s nest: "Heus, terra!" He squints into the distance until he works out the coastline, the beginnings of what will be menacing spires gouging the sky. He stays above deck until he can see Qarinus clearly.

It takes just over an hour to dock. Bull packs their things — Orosius is letting Dorian keep the book, or he's lifting it — and waits in the cabin until he’s summoned. The boat rocks when it’s anchored to the dock, and it’s like he feels it in his bones, the tether to the land. Some kind of finality to it.

He hasn’t stepped on Tevinter soil in years.

When Dorian comes into the cabin, he looks flustered, out of breath. “There you are, come, I want to be off this damned ship.” He reaches for his pack and Bull stands, knocking his hand away. Dorian glares at him, reaches again — and then stills. “Right.”

Bull picks both packs up, holds them in one hand, and cups Dorian’s chin with the other, drawing his thumb across Dorian’s cheek. “You ready for this?”

Dorian rolls his shoulders back, standing up straight. He’s letting his stubble grow in, and it ages him even more than the moustache did when he was younger. His hair’s styled, his makeup, precise. The sun’s done him well, his skin already darker than when they left Ferelden. The robes he purchased in Llomerryn have seen better days, desperately need to be laundered, but he’s still imposing in them, all black and gold and spikes like he told Bull once.

He looks the part: the heir, come to claim his due.

“I’m ready,” he says, and he leans into Bull’s touch for half a moment before righting himself, twisting his face into a proud smirk… Bull thinks it’s only half-forced. Dorian’s proud. Should be, too.

Bull nods, and drops his hand, and follows Dorian out of the cabin. Off of the ship. Down the dock and into the beginnings of the city, those damnable spires he saw in full view. Tevinter’s… Bull’s fascinated by what the dwarves do with rock, how they hew and shape it; but vints mold stone however they want it to look, sculpt it with magic. Even the customs office they’re walking up to looks effortlessly powerful, big blocks of stone nobody in the south would waste time to move for something so unimportant.

Inside, Orosius confirms Dorian’s assertion that he is the heir to House Pavus, family crest or no. The bureaucrats know of Halward Pavus’s death, and seem wary of Dorian; but they’re also bureaucrats, which means they’ll get their jobs done, aristocracy be damned. Bull stands still as death in the face of the port authority, who insist on inspecting their packs, even in the face of Dorian’s carefully-worded complaints.

“I appreciate the length of your journey, serah,” a woman in austere grey linens says to Dorian, once she’s finished with the packs, “as well as your understanding of the need for care in these tumultuous times.” Bull watches Dorian consider different ways to dispute this until he settles on quiet, seething disapproval.

She stands before Bull and orders him in trade to strip, which he does. She has him turn and lift his arms. She touches him in the center of the chest, and there’s a sudden shock of magic across Bull’s skin — he shudders, and Dorian steps forward, his tone murderous. “I’ll not have you disrespect me by harming my property.”

“A simple reassurance that your property has not been tampered with, serah,” the woman says blandly, and Bull respects her, just a little bit. Even if she just fucking zapped him.

She seems content after that, leaving Bull so she can discuss docking fees with Orosius. Bull can feel Dorian’s eyes on him while he dresses, and when Bull glances up he gets a look at him — Dorian looks livid, red-faced, but it’s likely playing off as anger over the slight to his pride. Good. Bull’s got this; it isn’t his first dance with vints. Dorian doesn’t need to get pissed off for him, this early in the game.

“That’s all settled then,” Orosius says pleasantly once she’s done, and she entwines her arm with Dorian’s and guides him out towards what must be the main street. Bull follows behind, their disheveled packs in-hand. “I couldn’t imagine turning you out now. I insist you allow me to share my coach with you, so you may arrive to your dear mother in short time.”

Dorian laughs — it sounds real, too. Probably because she called his mother “dear”. "Now you _must_ let me take some of those slaves off your hands, so I don't begin my establishing myself in Qarinus indebted to one of my illustrious fellow houses.”

She chuckles, and Bull can hear the eyeroll she must be shooting Dorian in her voice. “You just want to replace your mother’s slaves with your own.”

“And do you blame me? The last thing I need are slaves over-loyal to my parents.”

They talk right up to Orosius’ carriages. She and Dorian climb into the first cab, and Bull stares down the groomsman sitting next to the driver until the man fucks off to another carriage. Bull takes his place, and lets himself be amused by the way the man resolutely does not look straight at him, but keeps trying to get glimpses from the corner of his eye. At least Bull’s gonna be able to find constant entertainment in that — the last time he was in Minrathous, it’d killed him how, even with his guise of a mercenary,  everybody ignored him to his face and gawked once he’d turned, as though he wouldn’t notice. They’d acknowledge Gatt, and spend entire conversations staring him down because they were afraid their eyes may fall elsewhere.

He pays attention to their route, familiarizes himself with some of the landmarks on the way — bathhouses, a library, the entrance to one of the markets — and watches the buildings grow more grand, more intimidating. Black stone, shaped glass, the kind of metalwork you don’t get without magic and centuries of being allied with dwarves. They come to a stop in front of a gate eventually, beyond which Bull can see a stretch of stone leading to a fountain, behind which stands a massive home. There’s the click of the cab door behind him, and Dorian slides out of the carriage. He lays his palm flat against the centerplate of the gate and ducks his head — Bull can't imagine he doesn't remember how to open it. That kind of thing's gotta be burned into your brain. Maybe it's just that as much as they used to talk about this, Dorian's devotion to Tevinter, this burgeoning plan — maybe Dorian just never thought they'd get here. Bull hadn't ever doubted it.

Dorian whispers something in Tevene and the gate jerks, the metal curling back on itself as though made of leather and not iron. Bull's impressed despite himself. Interesting way to manage security, if nothing else; removes the need for a gate guard.

Dorian looks up at him as he returns to the carriage, and Bull gives him a smile. Dorian rolls his eyes and climbs back into the cab, and Bull gets a weird look from the driver when he chuckles.

They turn down the drive and Bull takes it in, the way House Pavus has set this up, a good three minute carriage ride from gate to imposing mansion, and in between is the fountain, a square of black marble with a naked lady made of the same marble standing on one leg in the middle of it, her arms outstretched towards the sky. Bull thinks they missed a real opportunity to have her fucking a peacock or something.

An older male human in simple but well-made robes comes down from the oversized doors to greet them. Bull climbs down to get the cab door, and the man — looks Rivaini now that he’s closer, tan skin and dark eyes under his salt and pepper hair — stands collectedly at the bottom of the stairs. He’s got the face of a guy who's seen it all, until Dorian climbs out of the cab again and approach the stairs. Bull watches the man's expression twist from careful disinterest to outright surprise, and then settle somewhere between.

"Master Dorian," the man says, and Dorian smiles at him, reaches out and clasps his arm.

"Good to see you again, Marcus. Please see that Mistress Lucretia makes it back to the road successfully." He turns to the cab, inclines his head, and from inside Bull can hear Orosius wish him well in his new station. Dorian passes Marcus and heads up the stairs, and Bull follows him, packs in-hand.

They stand in the entryway for a solid three or four minutes before there's the muffled sound of well-soled shoes on thick carpet. Bull's distracted by getting an eyeful of the place: cerulean curtains around large arched windows, the way the wood of the banisters curls up at the ends, carved into five spread feathers... He looks over only when Dorian steps forward, then hesitates.

The woman stalled at the landing halfway down the grand staircase is dressed in swathes of unadorned dark blue, her black hair drawn up under a veil that spills down her back. She looks like the fountain out front, her expression blank, sculpted from stone.

"Good afternoon, Mother."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [fiveyearmission](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyearmission) is my frigging hero. She's a beta extraordinaire, and she's saved this fic like 485906 times by now. THANK YOU, DEAR. ♥
> 
> Also a huuuge thank you to everyone who's been reading and kudos-ing and commenting, as well. Y'all warm my heart, genuinely.

He still has rooms. He’s not sure why that seems strange to him; what use would his parents have for this space, even in his absence? Surely they must have entertained the idea that eventually he would return, whether under his own volition or their careful machinations.

It surprises Dorian, how much he half-expected to see his father standing next to his mother on the landing, pleased to have finally drawn their wayward son home. Instead it had simply been Faustina of House Pavus, wearing the finest in mourning attire, welcoming Dorian back to Qarinus as though he had simply been away on business. She'd stayed on the landing, elevated above him in a way that must have delighted her, and ensured that Marcus would see to Dorian's comfort.

Then she had stated that she was feeling quite tired, and needed to lie down. She’d returned back up the stairs.

And that… that was that, Dorian's welcome home, his mother's impersonal demeanor unchanged since he'd last spoken with her. He's not sure what he expected, but that interaction has left him drained. Obviously he's more like his mother than either of them thought.

And now he's in his bedroom. He almost asks Marcus if they kept it maintained for him while he was gone or if there was a mad scramble to make it hospitable once his mother reached out to him. Regardless, as he stands in the center of the chamber, he feels... uncomfortable, at the opulence. He'd forgotten the crushed velvet curtains, the marble tile floors, the thick shag carpeting. At least everything's still in shades of ivory and teal, a refreshing change from the fashionable dark colors of the rest of the house.

Bull comes up behind him, places a hand on his arm, and he realizes he's been standing silently in the middle of his bedroom, taking it all in.

"Marcus says he’s had a bath drawn for you."

"Marcus has always been a good man," Dorian replies, and follows Bull into the adjoining washroom, more marble and granite, a large enameled cast iron tub in the middle of it. He strips and crouches next to the tub, sliding his hand into the lukewarm water so he can heat it. When he looks over his shoulder Bull's standing in the entryway, getting an eyeful. "Join me, won't you? I'm not the only one who reeks of the sea."

Bull huffs a laugh and takes off his clothing, leaving everything stacked in a pile near the door. He curses under his breath when he puts weight on his left knee without the brace, and Dorian stands next to the tub and waves towards it invitingly. Bull rolls his eye and brushes past him, releasing a moan from what sounds like the very depths of his stomach when he slides into the tub, water sloshing over the sides as it’s displaced. He mutters _sorry_ and tips his head back, the tub’s rim wide enough to comfortably allow him to rest just like that.

Dorian goes back to a crouch, skimming his fingers across the water once it’s settled. “When was the last time you had a bath in a tub big enough to hold you?”

“That a fat joke?” Bull asks, the words rumbling deep from inside his chest as he relaxes. Dorian chuckles, and thinks of fire, sending tendrils of heat into the water to ensure Bull doesn’t leech it all away. “I dunno. You tell me.”

Dorian looks up at Bull — the underside of his jaw, the curve of his neck leading down to his broad chest. It strikes him that he knows the story behind most of the scars on display, that he was either there when Bull got them or has heard Bull boast of them in a tavern, or whisper about them in bed when sleep doesn’t come. Today, a room full of strangers saw every scar Bull has and thought nothing of them, while Dorian knows, _cares_ how each was earned. As a young man he saw slaves handled all throughout Tevinter, saw them stripped and checked for health and tampering, and it never occurred to him that each body was an individual with thousands of nights of stories to tell.

He recalls an evening spent in the company of a dozen young alti, lounging about someone’s parlor and debating philosophy. _Children don’t understand that every other being exists wholly as its own entity, with thoughts and feelings outside of their purview_ , Oliver had remarked, and they had all sat about very impressed with their own wisdom until they drank themselves sick or partnered off to fuck in hidden corners, seen only by slaves, who didn’t matter.

Bull tears him from his thoughts, catching him by the wrist, tugging at his arm. “You joining me? Or is this a show?”

“I was simply remembering what an absolute pile of shit I was as a younger man,” Dorian replies, and climbs into the tub opposite Bull.

Bull leans his head forward and he arches a brow. “Didn’t take long.”

“It’s a large pile.” Dorian bends his knees and Bull shifts his legs to either side of him, poking a toe against Dorian’s hip.

They’re silent while Dorian reaches for soap and a washrag and cleans the stink off of himself, and Bull enjoys the heat on his creaking joints. When Dorian’s finished, he maneuvers forward onto his knees, soaps up the rag and drags it across Bull’s chest, down to his stomach under the waterline. Bull lets out a long sigh and tips his head back again, and Dorian slides further into his space, hooking his knees over Bull’s hips and pressing a kiss to his chin. “You need to shave.”

“Says you,” Bull responds, his voice a low rumble in his chest, and he wraps an arm around Dorian’s waist, holding him securely in place. “You’ve got a whole lot of something on your face.”

 _And I no longer look like my father_ , Dorian doesn’t say, but he has little doubt Bull doesn’t know anyway. “It makes me look dignified. It makes _you_ look uncouth.”

Bull’s lips curl into a smile, and Dorian shudders when Bull drops his hand down to cup his arse. "Are we expected anywhere for the rest of the day?"

Dorian forces himself to think beyond this moment — Bull's grip and the feel of his fat and muscle under Dorian's thighs, the warmth of the water and how intrinsically good it feels to be clean again.

"Dinner," he says, and hums when Bull squeezes one of his arsecheeks. "Dinner, and I should get started on my correspondence. There are people to notify, alliances to confirm or sever, and the matter of ensuring House Orosius is well-paid for their kindness, so we are indebted to them no longer than necessary."

"Boring shit then," Bull says, even though Dorian knows Bull harbors an abiding love for intrigue, Tevinter as it may be in this particular instance.

"Boring shit," Dorian agrees, and Bull rolls his hips up against Dorian's, water splashing over the rim of the tub. Dorian shudders, desire knotting up in the bottom of his stomach, and steadies himself with an arm around Bull's neck. He reaches down with his other, takes Bull's gorgeous dick in hand and guides it underneath him, trapped between Bull's thighs and Dorian's arse so that when Bull moves again they both hiss, the pressure just right.

Dorian comes too fast with a low moan, his teeth in Bull's shoulder, Bull's hands curved around his arse, moving him like they're fucking. He collapses into Bull's grip, into the strength of Bull’s hold, and digs his nails into the back of Bull's neck like claws. Bull whispers against his ear, a steady stream of curses and endearments, and Dorian forces his head up enough to lick across the marks his teeth have left in Bull's skin, where there will surely be a bruise tomorrow.

Others will see it, a mark unrelated to the imposing qunari’s many scars, and construct their own theories, none of them correct — something about that, how brazen it will be, how no Tevinter would conceive of it, gives him a thrill of energy straight down his spine. He rallies, reaching up and grasping Bull by the horns.

Bull shivers at the touch, panting open-mouthed against Dorian's neck while his hips jerk, his hands spasming on Dorian's arse as he comes. He slumps down against the back of the tub but keeps his grip on Dorian, so Dorian doesn't let go of his horns either. Dorian moves enough to kiss him, sloppy loose-mouthed kisses that Dorian feels deep down in his bones.

It’s long moments later that either of them do anything else. "I don't feel clean at all," Bull says against Dorian's mouth. Dorian groans through his laughter, and drops his hands from Bull's horns, pushing Bull away from him with a palm against his chin.

He climbs out of the tub and grabs the robe Marcus must have left for him from a curving iron hook on the wall, wrapping it around himself and relishing the plushness of it. When was the last time he wore a robe? Too long ago. He looks back to Bull, who's still lounging in the tub, head tipped back and eye closed. "Shall I come find you after dinner then, wrinkled up like a prune?"

Bull groans and slowly wraps his hands around either side of the tub, eventually levering himself up. Dorian watches him, the water sluicing off of the lines of his shoulder blades, his hips, his freckled and dimpled arse. There's no other robe, but Dorian grabs a towel from a second hook and holds it out to Bull when he lumbers close enough to grab it.

"We've found the only good thing about Tevinter," Bull says sagely, wiping his face off with the towel, and Dorian breathes out another laugh before following him back into the bedroom.

 

==

 

Faustina Pavus is standing at the head of the table when Marcus leads him into the dining hall. Marcus withdraws, hopefully to find Bull, so Bull can orient himself with the estate; and for the first time since arriving, Dorian is alone with his mother. He glances about the grand room and, damn — his mother, and the two slaves standing on either side of the door that leads to the kitchen. Two elf girls who look to be in their mid-teens, likely born to their parents in the service of House Pavus… Dorian holds tight to the unease beginning to burn behind his sternum and doesn’t let any of it show on his face.

“How kind of you to wait for me,” Dorian says. As he walks towards a chair, his mother steps forward, then pauses. She presses her hands together in front of her, and after several long seconds of increasingly uncomfortable silence she approaches him, lifts both of her hands and lays them on Dorian’s shoulders.

“Look at my boy,” she says, as though to herself. Dorian is not her boy; he hasn’t been for a decade, was not her _boy_ even before he left Tevinter, years spent away in Vyrantium and Minrathous. Regardless, he breathes out deeply to ensure he doesn’t respond in a manner unbefitting him. “Don’t be like that,” she continues anyway, and places one of her hands against Dorian’s jaw, her thumb brushing his beard. “Oh, this doesn’t suit you at all. I don’t like it.”

“I don’t rightly care what you think,” Dorian replies, far more blithely than he feels. Perhaps he should have demanded Bull accompany him to dinner, propriety be damned; Bull’s presence never fails to remind him to be tactful, thoughtful, measured in his responses. As it stands, he feels the familiar anger well up at the base of spine, spreading through his veins until his very fingers want to spark with it.

She purses her lips but doesn’t move away. “Don’t say things because you think they’ll hurt me. It’s beneath you, my darling.”

What a thing for her to say. He smiles at her and reaches up with both hands, takes her by her wrists and removes her from his person. “Mother, you’ll find that after so many years in the south, very few things are beneath me. I’m positively a _savage_. And I intend to bring much of that savagery with me to the Magisterium.”

She looks damnably unfazed by him, and withdraws back to the head of the table. He’s unsure if she doesn’t take him seriously, or if she simply doesn’t care what he thinks either. He could never tell that, with her; the performance she manages day-in and out is something Dorian could only ever dream of achieving, even now.

“Your father told me you had no desire to forgive either of us our transgressions.” She seats herself, and within moments the doors to the kitchen open and the kitchen slaves — two humans, three elves, all middle-aged men, Dorian wonders if any of them recognize him — begin to bring out dinner, an absolute embarrassment of food, five people carrying five platters. Perhaps his mother is trying to impress him; he won’t believe she eats like this daily.

“Father relayed my feelings on the matter correctly then,” Dorian replies, and sits down in the chair to her left, immediately reaching for his wine. It tastes like… red wine. His palate has been absolutely wrecked by Ferelden.

His manners, as well — when the first man serves him what looks to be roasted quail, Dorian very nearly thanks him. He drinks, to cover the mistake; and then again, to distract himself from how basic gratitude to another being could be a mistake.

Faustina says nothing at all until the men have served the food and left the platters on the table, before excusing themselves back to the kitchen. She too drinks her wine, and then she smiles at him, as though she finds him adorable. “I had hoped that in these intervening years you would have taken the time to consider our perspective.”

For Andraste’s sake, Dorian had thought he’d be able to delay this conversation at least until several days after his arrival. “Yes, let’s discuss this over dinner right now. Surely this is the topic that deserves our attention, and not the myriad of other matters we have to attend to—”

“Your father is interred, and I am expected to be in mourning until the end of the month.” His mother has lost her smile, and looks upon him as though he were a disobedient child. Speaks to him as though she must correct the illogic of his thoughts. The wine sits heavy in his stomach. “Within the week, we shall hold a ball to welcome you back to Tevinter, and to instate you as a magister. The Archon will be in attendance, as will the Divine. House Orosius has kindly offered to host the event, given the emotional turmoil we surely find ourselves in.”

“House Orosius takes liberties where it has none,” Dorian interrupts, and his mother smiles at him shrewdly.

“On that, we are in alignment. It seems we are in their debt for your safe arrival?”

Dorian scoffs. “No more than I’m also in debt to the wind and the water. Lucretia Orosius was in the right place at the right time to ensure her ship provided the most reliable means of coming to Qarinus. Any debts House Orosius believes they are owed will be resolved upon the sale of much of their recent shipment to House Pavus.”

His mother takes a long drink of her own wine, and then she smiles at him again. She seems proud, surprisingly enough. “We’ve no need of additional slaves, my darling.”

“We’ve less need of House Orosius positioning itself as our ally as I assume my position in the Magisterium,” Dorian replies, and her smile widens, reaching her eyes. Dorian’s… ashamed, when he feels a swell of pleasure in his chest at earning her approval.

“Your father never liked Magister Orosius,” Faustina says, and the half-formed happiness leaves him as quickly as it came. It _is_ excellent practice, he supposes, for when everything he does is compared to his father’s legacy. He ignores the emptiness left behind — he will soon have enough to do, and letting disappointment linger is self-defeating.

He gives himself time to reply by finally tucking in to the food before him, roasted quail and swordfish and asparagus wrapped in bronto belly. It’s all delicious, nearly too rich for him, and there’s no chance he’ll eat anything else from the teeming platters… perhaps the extra food will be made available to the help once they’ve finished. If it isn’t, then that will be his first change. The hands that worked to put it here should at the very least reap some sort of benefit from that labor.

“Affection or a lack thereof has nothing to do with it,” he says eventually, when his fork scrapes against the delicate china of his emptied plate. “House Orosius is likely a fine example of Tevinter standards.” Which is of course the problem, and from the discerning look on his mother’s face, he thinks she might have caught that.

“What game do you plan on playing here, child?” She sets her silverware across her own plate and clasps her hands under her chin, tipping her head towards him as though she actually plans to hear whatever he tells her, as though she won't simply nod and disregard it all.

"I've no plans for games, Mother." He dabs at his mouth with his napkin, and lifts his goblet — he's depleted his wine, of course, and as he turns to request a refill from one of the elf girls by the kitchen door, his mother snaps her fingers.

The girl on the left startles, quickly coming forward to pour for him; she's flushed with embarrassment, her chin lowered to her chest, and she whispers, "My apologies for the delay, Master Dorian." She’s small even for an elf, dark eyes and skin and hair, and he realizes with quick horror that she has even darker vallaslin, that she must have been with her clan — _free_ — until recently. She fills his glass and returns to her position at the door.

Dorian's able to school the outrage into something less obvious, is only frowning when he turns his attention back to his mother. She mirrors his expression, says, "Isn't it foolish how they can barely manage the one job they're assigned? Perhaps the slaves you're purchasing _will_ come in useful around the house." She returns to her food, and Dorian looks over to see the girl's face still colored with obvious shame, her hands shaking at her sides even while she tries to control it, standing ramrod straight and tall at her position. He wonders if his mother even knows the girl's name.

They eat the remainder of dinner in silence, and Faustina excuses herself with her wine in-hand. Dorian sits at the table for what must amount to ten minutes, thinking of nothing at all, finishing his own wine. Eventually he forces himself to stand, picks up his empty plate and goblet, and heads toward the kitchen door.

On his approach, the two girls look at him as though he's summoned a demon before them. The girl on the left shrinks back against the wall. The girl on the right, taller, thinner, with fair skin and dark blonde hair pulled tightly back from her face, steps forward but hesitates. It's instilled in her, he assumes, that she should do nothing to stop her master; but it's as equally instilled that no master should have to do for themselves what could be done by a slave.

He smiles at them both in turn, and then looks to the taller girl. "It's all right...?"

He waits, and after a long moment she ducks her head. "Elaine, Master Dorian."

"Thank you," Dorian says, and her shoulders go tense. Andraste, is even that simple decency supposed to be beyond him? "I'd like to meet the kitchen staff if I may, Elaine."

"Of… course, master." She steps aside, and the other girl does as well. Dorian pushes the door open and walks through, and any movement occurring beyond the door before his entrance lurches to a halt. The kitchen is large, and Dorian notes doors leading off to what must be the pantry and winecellar. In the center is a long table with benches, and he’s relieved to see both Bull and Marcus sitting amongst a dozen or so other people, elves and humans both. They appear to have been eating — simple foods, bread and potatoes — before Dorian walked in, which means that perhaps _no one_ eats the leftovers from the main table.

“Good evening,” Dorian says to resounding silence, every head turned to his with similar expressions of confusion. He opens his mouth to announce his intention — simply to deliver his dirtied dishes, and meet the staff — but he’s distracted by the thunderous look on Marcus’s face, and Bull’s standing up from the table and coming to him.

Bull looks ridiculous: the secondhand trousers Dorian had purchased for him in Llomerryn were nearly too small once he’d put them on, and nothing on-hand matched his stature or girth. Marcus had fetched one of Faustina’s simplest dressing gowns on Dorian’s order, and Dorian had cut away excess fabric until it was — arguably — a tunic. Too-tight trousers and pale brocade are unlike anything Dorian’s ever seen Bull in; it’d been amusing to the both of them in his bedroom.

Now, Bull’s foolish clothing only serves as an unsettling counterpoint to his tumultuous expression. “Master Dorian.” Bull takes the dishes from him immediately, and passes them to a man who appears at Bull’s shoulder. “Is there anything we can assist you with?”

Dorian’s misstepped here. Even were he daft enough to ignore every other bit of evidence, Bull’s face tells him that. “No. I only thought to survey the kitchens for myself, but I can see that I’m interrupting. Please, continue with your meal.” He nods at the room in general, and leaves through the door he came in.

The girls in the dining room haven’t moved from their stations, and Dorian doesn’t risk looking at them to see their reactions to his behavior — if they’re equally as befuddled, mortified… Marcus had looked _angry_ at him, and in the fifteen odd years Marcus spent as Dorian’s minder, he’d never made the man visibly cross.

He retires to his rooms, and takes what’s left of the bottle of wine with him.

 

==

 

He’s halfway through writing out the sales contract — to be reviewed by the family accountant tomorrow, and then the solicitors of both House Pavus and House Orosius — when the door to the bedroom opens and Bull stalks in. Dorian turns in his seat and watches Bull shut and lock the door behind him, then untie and remove the improvised tunic and deposit it in one of the room’s dressers. He looks more familiar shirtless, but the cross look on his face ruins the effect.

“I hope I didn’t irrevocably mar the mood of the evening,” Dorian says, and Bull stares at him for a long moment before shaking his head, walking over to grab the bottle of wine off of the writing desk. Bull drinks what must be left of it, and sets it back on the desk with barely a click. Another man sporting Bull’s expression may have chosen to throw the bottle against the far wall.

Bull sighs, and shakes his head again, rubbing a hand across his face. “You get why what you did was the wrong move, right?”

Dorian caps the inkwell on the desk and sets down his quill. Admitting his own ignorance is still unnatural to him, but he’s not a child, unwilling to own up to his faults. “I understand it was wrong-footed of me, but not the reason.”

Bull nods once, then drags his teeth over his lower lip. He’s taking the time to find the right words, something Bull rarely has to do — he’s always been articulate, even when upset. Dorian was unsettled before, the disaster of the kitchen weighing heavily on him, but this, Bull's reticence, genuinely unnerves him.

"The spaces the slaves have here — the kitchen, their quarters, any other backroom in this house — are all they have. There's an unspoken trust between them and you, that you give them that much. You don't belong there."

Dorian frowns. He of course grasps what Bull's saying, but there's such a vehemence to the words, as though what Dorian did was unforgivable — and _that_ he doesn't understand at all. "I simply wanted to meet them."

"You're not their friend," Bull says, voice firm, eye narrowed. "You're their owner."

"I don't _want_ to be their owner," Dorian replies fiercely, standing up from his seat, forcing Bull to take a step back. "I would be their employer." It's been sitting at the back of his mind since he retired to his bedroom, that thought — freeing them, the entirety of the staff, and offering them compensation for their labor.

“Will that be your first known act as magister? Freeing the slaves of House Pavus?”

The words may as well be a slap in the face, for all that Dorian feels them bone deep, for all that they raise a furious red to his cheeks. He opens and shuts his mouth. It’d be disastrous, Bull knows it as well as he does, if the newly-appointed Magister Pavus swanned in from the south with his new ideals, his obvious biases, and uprooted things so openly.

He thinks, jarringly, of Solas — glaring at Dorian while they trekked across the miserable Exalted Plains, taunting him about what changes he would dare make to Tevinter.

In the proceeding silence, Bull no longer looks angry with him. Looks saddened instead. It’s so very much worse.

“That would be political suicide,” Dorian finally says, the words bitter on his tongue.

Bull closes his eye, jerking his head in a nod. He stays silent, and Dorian knows that to be the condemnation it is — Bull would always rather be silent than cruel. When he chose to say nothing, it was more due to his strict control than a lack of opinion.

Dorian looks back to his desk and the contract. Thinks of the remaining slaves he won’t be able to buy from Lucretia. He doesn’t know where to begin, to imagine what those men and women — the _children_ — will undergo in their lifetimes. “I’m trying, Bull.”

Bull steps into his space, closes his hands around Dorian’s forearms. When Dorian looks up at him, Bull’s expression is still sad, but also open, _kind_ — Dorian closes his eyes and sags into his hold. Bull moves one arm around his back, and Dorian lifts his hands between them, palms firm against Bull’s chest.

Bull kisses his forehead, so bloody tender. “You leave it to me.” His grip loosens around Dorian, and Dorian forces himself to stand up on his own two damned feet, dropping his hands to his sides.

“Please pass along my sincere apologies to the staff.” Dorian breathes in and out slowly, and sits back at his writing desk.

“Not gonna do that,” Bull replies, and Dorian closes his eyes. Nods. Bull says something about needing to speak with Marcus, and leaves him to his work.

Dorian sits at the writing desk and reviews the draft: House Pavus will purchase 30 head of the most recent shipment of House Orosius, selected by House Pavus, for some amount of coin — the accountant will determine what’s acceptable later — as a show of gratitude for House Orosius’ coming to House Pavus’ aid.

How clinical. As though they were cattle.

Dorian rubs a hand across his forehead. He has other things to deal with — his mother had her choices for the ball sent up to him, carried in the arms of a middle-aged male elf who wouldn’t meet Dorian’s eyes. He should review them as well.

It simply wouldn’t do for his reintroduction to go poorly, not in front of the _Archon_. He sets aside the document deciding the fate of actual sentient living beings so that he can review _hors d’oeuvres_ options.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why did this take so long, she asks herself. why.
> 
> Which is to say, [fiveyearmission](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyearmission) literally saved this fic from being abandoned bc I'd written myself into a corner and was so frustrated. BUT ALL IS WELL. She's the best. The b e s t.
> 
> Also what's the best is the #bullstache crew. Y'all are incredible. Bless u.

Dorian looks surprised to see him outside his door, and sure, it's late, but Bull knows he doesn't sleep when there's work to get done; Dorian should know Bull knows that. But Dorian's got his noble kicked-puppy face on too, behind the surprise, so regardless Bull made the right decision in heading upstairs after he'd finished up with Marcus.

"Can I come in?"

Dorian glances down the hallway, as though anyone else still awake would be loitering up here (no one is, Bull's already confirmed it), and steps to the side so Bull can come through.

"I wasn't expecting you," Dorian says, once he's closed the door behind Bull, and he uses the excuse of walking back to his desk to shuffle his papers so he doesn't have to come up with a way to avoid Bull's eye.

"I smoothed things over with Marcus and the rest, so we're good." Dorian pauses, a stack of paper in his hands, and nods. Bull continues, "Everybody's willing to accept that you've been in the south too long."

"Thank you," Dorian says, and then, ruefully, "if I'm allowed _that_."

Bull frowns, and Dorian keeps not looking at him. "Kadan."

Dorian does turn with that, and his expression is fixed somewhere between frustration and self-loathing. It’s something Bull’s prided himself on over the years, giving Dorian the space he needs to work out the shit he feels about himself — but there’s not as much room for that here, if there’s any at all.

Bull reaches a hand out to him, and Dorian works at the inside of his cheek for a minute before stacking the papers back on the desk, then stepping forward to slide his fingers between Bull’s. “There we go,” Bull says, and Dorian breathes out heavily and moves into Bull’s space, laying his brow against Bull’s chest.

“In this room, we’re just gonna be you and me,” Bull says, wrapping his fingers around Dorian’s hand as far as they’ll go. “Anytime I’ve got anything to say to you about this shit in the future, we don’t do it here. Same with you to me, yeah?”

Dorian shifts against him, looping his other arm around Bull’s waist as far as it’ll go. His beard sort of tickles Bull’s chest when he opens his mouth to speak: “Establishing ground rules, are we?”

"Yeah, if you wanna look at it that way." Bull raises his free hand and slides his fingers through the curls of Dorian's hair. He's always kept it short, a couple inches at most, but Dorian’s letting it grow out just like his beard — likely gonna be a while yet before it’s long enough that Dorian doesn’t see his father in the mirror. "We keep things separate, so we don't get all of this shit muddled with our own shit."

"Ours is _much_ more palatable," Dorian agrees quietly, and he presses a kiss to Bull’s sternum. Makes what else Bull came up to here to say fucking difficult.

He tugs lightly on Dorian's hair, and Dorian pulls back enough to look up at him. "I've got a room with a couple of the boys downstairs, this tiny bedroll to call my own.” Dorian’s already figuring out Bull’s point, Bull can see it in his eyes. “I’m gonna suggest something, and I need you to know I’m not happy about it before I do.”

Dorian lifts an eyebrow, pursing his lips, and nods.

Bull breathes out slow, sliding his hand out of Dorian’s hair, down to the back of his neck. “I should stay with 'em, for at least a while, so nobody starts getting any thoughts about who I am to you."

Bull knew going into this that he could bring up the bad news after he’d laid out the good… well, the neutral news, but Dorian's expression still goes to shit once the words are out of his mouth. Dorian's grip goes tight on Bull's hand, and Bull watches him work his cheek between his teeth so he doesn't say the first thing that comes to mind.

"We'll rarely see each other,” is what Dorian settles on.

"Just for a while," Bull says, and hates how the words make Dorian's face twist up. "Once they trust me, we can go back to normal."

"'Normal'," Dorian scoffs, and steps back, dragging a hand across his face. "Why did I do this to us?"

"Because you're gonna change Tevinter, right?" Bull replies easily, sincerely, because it’s fucking impossible but if anyone can do it, it’ll be Dorian. Dorian's gonna change this shithole or they're gonna die trying and burn it to the ground, and Bull's gonna stand by him the entire way.

Dorian gets this look on his face, like Bull’s talking nonsense at him, and rubs his knuckles against his eyes. When he finally drops his hand back to his side, he looks at Bull with a tired expression and nods once, slowly.

"Do not assume I can do this without you," he says, his voice so _small_ , and Bull reaches for him.

 

==

 

The fourth day in, Bull starts to get stir crazy. He expected it, but it’s still weird to wake up in a room packed with sleeping bodies and get a full-on _itch_ to frigging do something. He's been doing stuff: he's got a feel for the slaves of the house, and knows each of their names; and he’s beginning to gain their trust. It's why he knew he had to sleep downstairs with them — it looks better, at least for now. Gives him more of an in than if he were to disappear upstairs every night, keep sharing Dorian's baths and coming back down smelling like a fucking rose.

If Bull gives himself time to think about it, it’s fucking awful. Ten years solid of sleeping with somebody wrapped around you like a leech or stealing the blankets when even the tiniest breeze slips under the door… it’s not like they’ve not been apart: they’ve each had to do their own things sometimes. Still, that first night Bull spent on a bedroll on the floor — and every subsequent night - was _fucking awful_. He doubts Dorian’s nights spent on that ridiculous bed of his have been any better.

It’s not strange to not be around Dorian; but it’s odd as shit to do it purposefully. At least it is working; everybody downstairs is warming up to him, slowly but surely. Bull’s not gonna make a judgment on whether it’s worth it or not, but it’s _something_.

A lot of the staff's been there for years, but there's only a handful of 'em from before Dorian left for the south. There's shit there, buried deep — he never asked Dorian if Halward used his own slaves for the failed ritual, but he's not sure he needs to now. Marcus for one acts conflicted about Dorian, subtly, just enough to notice — he clearly has some affection for him too, but it's tainted.

Bull sits next to Marcus at breakfast — plain oatmeal, which is simple but hearty, makes Bull think of breakfasts shared with his tama and her other wards when he was real small — and Marcus lays out his plans for the day, what needs done around the estate and what they can get a jump on for tomorrow.

Bull listens, and when Marcus pauses to eat, Bull says, "Master Dorian's arranging the purchase of additional slaves from House Orosius today."

Marcus frowns around his wooden spoon, and lowers it to his plate as he chews. "How many?"

Bull shrugs a shoulder, grabbing his share of bread and tearing it apart to stick in his oatmeal. It tastes weird, but it's better than straight bread. "Thirty or so, I think. A third of the shipment was kids, so I'd expect a mix of adults and children."

Marcus sighs, rubbing his thumb across his brow. "Of course. Mouths to feed with little work to show for it. The mistress won't be pleased."

"Master Dorian'll take care of that, if it comes up."

Marcus eyes him — it's a thin rope Bull's walking here. As the head slave, Marcus sees everything, or it gets back to him in some way eventually. Bull's not suffering from any sort of misconception that Marcus doesn't know him and Dorian are fucking, but that's not abnormal: tons of slaveowners fuck their slaves. What Bull can't have is Marcus knowing with a surety that Bull's got Dorian's ear, that Dorian's not who or what he presents himself as — sometimes a slave gets a modicum of power and anything that anybody does to upset that is in trouble.

Bull has no doubt Faustina would listen to Marcus if he went to her with something, and Bull's not gonna create that extra layer of bullshit for Dorian to wade through.

"Of course he will," Marcus says after several more bites.

They eat, and people come and go from the kitchen, and eventually Bull stands to get to his tasks — he's mostly been doing grunt work since he arrived, given his size and strength compared to the slaves already in residence, the majority of whom are just this side of undernourished one and elves two.

It’s straightforward, boring — manual labor that suits his build if not his brain. But it lets him keep his head down as the days slip by: he does what Marcus asks of him, befriends the men who deliver the estate’s necessities when he can move their goods twice as fast as they’re used to, and sees Dorian for brief moments alone when Bull gets an excuse to see to “Master Dorian”. In any other setting it’d be kind of sexy — all cloak and dagger moments holding each other tight just inside the door to Dorian’s rooms, foreheads pressed together and Dorian’s hands on his horns, steady, close, like they could squeeze an entire day in each other’s company into a handful of minutes. Then there’re the times Bull catches Dorian in passing — when Dorian doesn’t see _him_ , always surrounded by men and women speaking in rapid-fire Tevene about budgets and guest lists, looking flashy and commanding and like he could take Tevinter down with a flick of his wrist.

The work itself though, it’s not bad — honest work at its roots, all told, and nobody stares at his eyepatch and missing fingers outright anymore.

Bull’s in the kitchen with Elaine and Quinten, a quiet human who speaks trade with just enough of an Ander inflection to place him, when the bell that signals someone's approaching the house goes off. Faustina should be out for the afternoon being pampered in preparation for tomorrow’s soiree, so it’s unlikely she has a caller — but Dorian…

“Master Dorian left to visit House Orosius this morning,” Elaine says, looking at him. The contract should’ve been signed days ago, so unless the estate has another caller, it's Dorian… fuck, returned with the cargo.

Elaine puts it together just after he does, going suddenly tense with poorly-concealed distress at his side — she’s a good kid, smart, kind. She was born into this, and it’s not hard to see from how she treats the slaves who were abducted and sold, or sold themselves into it, that she feels like they’re her responsibility. Should be too young to have that active a mothering instinct.

“Let’s go check it out,” Bull says, and she immediately shakes her head — but he keeps walking, not thinking about anything but having Amelia in his sight again. Once he’s at the door to their back passageways she breathes out loudly and follows after him, Quinten bringing up the rear.

They’re not the only ones making their way to the front parlor; a group of about ten of ‘em end up standing clumped together next to the grand stairway. If Bull sees Faustina he’ll get everybody back into the passage — no use letting anyone get in her line of fire on a good day, let alone one when her son’s bringing in more slaves — but for now they’re good, and Marcus glances over at them when he comes from the library to greet Dorian at the door.

Dorian swans in looking pleased with himself, always a good look on him, and he pulls open the second door while Marcus holds the first. There’s a shuffle of many feet from outside, and Bull realizes he’s clenching his teeth, biting down on the insides of his cheeks. He forcibly separates his jaw.

People dressed in simple clothing pour into the front parlor — Bull figures Faustina has to be out, because there’s no way Marcus would allow this kind of procession if it was possible for her to show up in the middle of it. Bull counts the heads quick… thirty-three, if he’s got everyone. He recognizes some of them: a couple of the adults who got used to him by the end of the journey; three kids crowded close and holding each other’s hands; the girl with the broken arm.

But that’s everybody, looks like. He doesn’t hear any more feet.

He told Dorian about Amelia. Dorian knew about her, he could recognize her by trip’s end, but Bull doesn’t see her. He almost forgets his place, finds himself pushing through the elves standing in front of him — but Elaine grabs him by the wrist, her tiny fingers barely making it halfway. He stops, and she lets go of him.

Dorian’s still at the door though, and his head’s tilted down — Bull tries to listen over the dull noise of too-many people crowded into a room, none of whom want to be there. His height gives him the advantage of sight, but it’s bright outside, and he only makes out the small figure when it’s close, just beyond the doors—

He does shoulder his way out of the throng then, ignoring Elaine’s quiet _Bull_ , and moves easily through the new guys when they shift out of his way. He drops to a knee and waits for Amelia to enter the house, wide-eyed and wearing too-big clothes, her shoulders curved forward and her mouth open like she’s stuck mid-gasp. When she sees him, her face lights up like him being there makes up for any of the crap that’s happened in the last couple days, and she trips on the front hem of her shift running to him. He catches her easy, keeping her on her feet.

She smiles up at him, and for a second all he can see is what’s happened since they parted: her lips are cracked, she needs more water, she’s not used to this heat; her hair’s been washed so she’s probably been bathed by uncaring hands, grabbed and held by people who didn’t think of her as a fucking person, he could rip ‘em _apart_ —

And then Marcus is before them, tasking the old guard with taking the new members of the staff back to the quarters at the back of the house. Bull gets to his feet and holds a hand out to Amelia. Her hand barely wraps around his forefinger.

He’s so fucking glad to see her smile up at him.

She fits in the curve of his elbow and sits at the right height to lean her head against his, just under his horns, once he picks her up and gets her settled. She lets out a squeak at one point and Bull knocks his knuckles against her shin, jostling her gently. “You okay there?”

“I’m _high up_ ,” she says, her voice muffled. He makes sure his grip is solid on her and stands to the side of everybody getting shit done, watching Marcus delegate leading the new arrivals around to the other slaves to ensure everybody ends up where they need to go.

Elaine gets her orders from Marcus, gathers up the children, and leads them down the hall towards the women’s bedrooms. Bull follows her, Amelia silent against him, and she directs him to take her into one of the rooms with two of the other kids, two human boys holding hands — brothers, Bull decides once he gets a good look at them.

He crouches down onto the floor and lets Amelia out of his grip, but she stays next to him. “I’m Bull,” he tells the boys, and the bigger one glares at him with all the spite he can muster, moving in front of his brother but still keeping his grip on his brother’s hand. Good kid. “You mind if I sit in here for a bit?”

The boy works his teeth in his bottom lip for half a minute before looking at Amelia, who nods at him quickly. He shrugs, and plunks down on his bottom, pulling his brother’s arm until he sits as well.

They sit there quietly for all of thirty seconds before Amelia wraps her fingers around the sleeve of Bull’s tunic and tugs. “Do you have Mary and Cassandra still?”

It takes Bull a moment to remember, and then he smiles at her. “Yeah. I can bring them by later?”

She nods, and turns to the boys. “He makes _toys_ ,” she tells them, and the younger kid’s head jerks up, his mouth falling open.

Quinten leans into the room and tells Bull Elaine’s looking for him, and Bull gives him a nod before turning back to Amelia and the others. “You get comfortable in here, okay? The nice lady who brought you here, Elaine — this is her room. You need anything, you ask her and she can find me, okay?”

Amelia nods immediately, and the others look at her first and then nod in kind. Bull draws his hand over Amelia’s hair and gets to his feet.

He finds Elaine in one of the women’s bedrooms, knelt next to one of many straw-filled mattresses — and the girl with the broken arm. Elaine’s speaking in low tones to her, her hands hovering over the girl’s arm, and when Bull walks in Elaine glances up at him.

“Can you take a look at this?”

She shifts out of the way so Bull can squat and inspect the sling, the curve of the girl’s arm — shit, if she’s one of Dorian’s now… “What’s your name, kid?”

The girl rolls her lips into her mouth and bites them, then looks at him. “Lizbeth.” She winces when he touches her shoulder, but he doesn’t think it’s because her arm hurts. Would that he could wring Lucretia Orosius by the neck.

“I’m Bull, Lizbeth. I’m going to unwrap the sling and see how your arm’s healing. That okay?”

She nods, and looks away when he unties the raggedy linen somebody used on her. He passes the strip to Elaine, who frowns and chucks it into the basket by the door to be laundered. “Who helped you out, Lizbeth?” Because they sure as shit didn’t know what they were doing — her arm hasn’t been set properly, and any healing's that happened are only making things worse. Stitches would be so proud of him.

He holds his breath for a second. Thinks about Stitches, because it's been a while since he's thought about his boys. Shit.

He breathes out when Lizbeth opens her mouth. "One of the others, nobody special."

Bull turns to Elaine, who's hovering behind him and wringing her hands in the front of her apron. "The house physician — what's he know about resetting bones?"

Elaine starts to respond but gets interrupted when Marcus walks into the room, standing at Bull's shoulder and surveying Lizbeth's arm. "I overheard while I was passing. We mustn't tell Dr Ansel of this. It's unlikely Mistress Pavus would find it worth the cost."

Bull breathes in through his teeth. "That's great, but her arm's healing wrong."

"Elaine?" Marcus looks towards her and she nods. "Take Bull with you. Let me know if there's any issue." He heads back out as abruptly as he came, and both Bull and Lizbeth look to Elaine, who's got a determined look on her face.

Elaine drops to a knee next to Bull and smiles at Lizbeth, reaches out and squeezes her ankle where it hangs from the end of the mattress. "We only need his permission to leave for the market; he'll assign someone to cover our duties. If we go now, we should be back just as dinner's wrapping up for the mistress."

She slides off her apron and hands it to Bull, who looks it over, figures out how to fashion it into a sling. "I'm going to put your arm back up. That okay?"

Lisbeth nods after a while, and Bull works it around her as carefully as possible, pausing when she winces.

"You good to walk?" Bull asks Lizbeth once it's tied, and she glares at him — he holds his hands up, palms out, in front of him. He didn't have a good guess of her age beyond "teenager" before, but he's figuring the older side of the range now, if she’s gotten over her trepidation fast enough to be annoyed at him. "Got it."

She pushes herself up on her good hand and stands, and Elaine leads them out of the room.

 

==

 

By the time they make it to the market, Bull’s caught Lizbeth staring at his horns a good seven times, and his eyepatch another four.

“If you’re gonna look, you can stop trying to be sneaky about it,” Bull says after a while, and she startles.

“I’m not—!” She wraps her good arm around her stomach and glances down at her feet, then up at Elaine’s back as she leads them through the curving stone-paved streets.

“Subtle you’re not, kid,” Bull says, kind as he can, thinking of her amateur attempts at info-gathering, and her shoulders round forward as they walk. “I’m sorry about your arm.”

She shrugs with her good shoulder, and ahead of them Elaine slows down.

Elaine glances back at them and stops, waiting for them to get even with her. "He’s down this alley. I should've told you earlier, before we left, but he's... strange. "

“Strange how?” Bull asks as they head down the alley. “Vints are pretty damn strange to begin with.”

“He’s not from Tevinter.” Elaine holds up a curtain and Bull and Lizbeth walk into a small room, dark and cool after the heat of the market. There’s a handful of chairs around a small table against the far wall and several opened crates with straw sticking through each’s slats stacked near the entrance, but the room’s otherwise empty. It’s simple, dirt floors and bare mud brick walls, and the doorway leading further into the clinic is obscured by a dusty brown curtain. A man calls _enter_ , and Elaine leads them both past the curtain.

The man standing over the makeshift exam table looks older than Bull, gray hair pulled back from his lined face — though his hands move over his tools with the alacrity of a younger man. There’s another door behind him, and Bull can hear muffled sounds of the market trickling through.

The man looks up from the table and frowns when he sees Elaine. “Surely not so soon...?”

Elaine flinches, her hands balling into fists —  and she shakes her head, stepping aside to let Lizbeth in front of her. “This is Lizbeth. Her arm’s broken.”

“Needs to be reset,” Bull adds, stepping further into the room. The man stares at him for a long moment before nodding, turning to Lizbeth and gesturing towards the table.

He’s a mage, Bull realizes while the man’s looking over Lizbeth’s arm, his hands working slowly over the break as Lizbeth holds back a wince. He’s got the right calluses for it, the build of someone who’s used to wielding a staff. He’s not a vint though, his Tevene’s inflected wrong — Ferelden, most likely. Escaped Kinloch after everything went to shit, probably, and came to greener pastures. Found this instead.

“Lay down for me, would you?” He waits for Lizbeth to obey, and then looks at Bull. “Help me, qunari.”

Bull stands over Lizbeth opposite the man, and wraps his hand around Lizbeth's good arm while the man murmurs low under his breath. Lizbeth's eyes drift shut, and Bull presses two fingers to her neck to feel her heartbeat slow. "You always been a healer?"

The man's expression falters as he probes her arm less hesitantly now he doesn't have to worry about her hurting from it. "Please don't distract me, Iron Bull."

Bull nods, returns his hand to Lizbeth's elbow. Nobody mentioned his name to the guy, so unless Elaine's just that familiar, Bull has another thing to figure out for today.

Elaine steps up to stand at Lizbeth's feet, and she sounds weary when she says, "Can you reset it? Without issue?"

The man's mouth turns down and he glares up at her; she falls silent and Bull tries to get a pulse on all the different threads going on. Can't ask questions now though, not if the man's pissy faces mean anything, so Bull waits, holding Lizbeth still — she's asleep, she shouldn't feel it, but her body still goes taut when the mage does something, forces the bones in her arm to break and resettle. Not a sound Bull hears often outside of battle, and Elaine's already pale skin seems to go a shade lighter.

The man works efficiently though, has clearly been doing this sort of shit for years, and it's not long before they're setting Lizbeth up with a better sling.

"She'll be under for another ten minutes or so," he says, and looks straight at Bull. His eyes are bright in the dimness of the room, and it raises the hairs on Bull’s arms. "Join me in the back, would you?"

Elaine stays with Lizbeth, holding her good hand, and Bull follows him through the other door into what must be where he sleeps. Bull considers when the guy's back is still to him — a mage without a staff can still be powerful, especially at his age, so if Bull needs to defend himself it'd be best to catch him off guard, as soon as possible... but the man's also been operating here for a while, so what'd be the sense in fucking things up now?

"I saw the way you looked at me, when I said your name," the man says, and pours himself tea from a kettle from the hearth. "I apologize for catching you off guard. It wasn't my intention."

"You're doing a lot of talking without telling me anything useful," Bull replies, and the man gives him a strained smile. Bull can’t get a read on him. It’s fucking unnerving.

"Most simply call me the Healer. I'm an... associate of Varric's. I received a letter nearly a month ago about your potential arrival in Tevinter. He advised me I might run into you."

“Varric knows everybody, don’t he.” Bull frowns. Varric’s probably got contacts spread across the whole of Thedas, so it’s no surprise Bull’s never heard of who he’s got in Tevinter. But Bull trusts Varric, not anybody who wields his name. “You’ve got the upper hand here. You know who I am, and I don’t know shit about you.”

“I’m a healer,” the man says with a twisted smile on his face, and sits in the lone chair in the room. “What would you know otherwise?”

“Your name, for one. How you know Varric, for the other. Thirdly, what I’m supposed to do now we’ve met; Varric wouldn’t have told you of our coming if there weren’t something to be made of it.”

The Healer nods, lowering his head to breathe in the steam wafting from the mug in his hands. “That’s a lot of questions.”

Bull crosses his arms and shifts between his feet. The cobblestones on the way here wreaked havoc on his legs.

The Healer tips his head towards Bull. “I can help you with the pain, if you’d like.”

“I don’t do the magic thing,” Bull responds, though it hasn’t been true for years. What healing magic Dorian can do, Bull’s benefited from — it’s saved his life, likely enough. But some strange mage in Tevinter isn’t gonna get near Bull’s _anything_ with their spellcraft.

“A strange position to hold given your relationship with the magister.”

“He’s not a magister yet,” Bull says, and he steps forward, barely thinks before doing it. He’s been up to his fucking eyeball with mages who won’t talk straight and he’s sick to death of it. “Now you tell me why you wanted to speak with me, or I’m out.”

“House Pavus purchased a large quantity of slaves this afternoon.” The Healer says it as though he’s talking about the weather, and when it’s clear he’s not about to volunteer any information himself, Bull breathes out in a rush and shakes his head.

“I’m not interested in playing your games.” He drops his arms to his sides and turns to go back to the girls. Behind him he can hear the scrape of a chair against the dirt floor, the shuffle of feet.

“Is the heir of House Pavus a kind man?” the Healer asks, and it sounds… Bull turns back to face him. It sounds like the Healer’s getting at something else, and all Bull’s gotta do is cotton on to it. He could write a book of sonnets on Dorian’s relationship with kindness, but discounting that and with the slave thing the Healer mentioned, kindness would mean…

Bull goes with his hunch. “Yeah, he is.”

The Healer nods. He looks older than he must be, for a second, as though his past has been a war he’s still battling. “I help whomever I’m able, in my position as a healer. But I am lucky to have connections outside of Tevinter. When possible, I oversee trade with those connections.”

He’s not a slaver. It’s nothing you’d need to speak around, not here — and it hits Bull all at once, what the guy’s getting at. House Pavus purchased slaves, and Dorian Pavus is a kind man. The Healer helps whoever he can, and he facilitates shipments out of Tevinter.

“You get people out.”

The Healer smiles again, and Bull feels this… overwhelming urge to _step back_ , suddenly. Bull could probably take him by each arm and pull him in half, right down the middle; still, Bull gets the feeling he’d never get close enough to _try_.

The Healer places his mug on his thigh, and sits up straight. He smiles, and that’s what it is — the thing never reaches his eyes, like somebody grabbed a chunk of clay and molded it across his face.

“Yes. It’s the just thing to do.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so excited about this chapter, guys. So excited.
> 
> HUGE SHOUTOUT to [fiveyearmission](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3396368/chapters/7433135), who continues to frigging beat this fic into shape even while she's being torn every which way by her new job. You're frigging awesome, hon. Thank you so, so much.
> 
> Also, the tags are just gonna get worse and worse for this fic. I try to tag for everything, so please look over them and if you need additional info re: a specific thing before reading, hit me up. If I miss something you feel should be tagged, let me know that too.

Bull finds Dorian the evening before the ball and draws him into his arms, ducking down to touch their foreheads together, a grounding embrace after the chaos of Dorian’s recent days. “Thank you,” Bull says after a while, and when Dorian lifts an eyebrow continues, “for getting Amelia here.”

Dorian frowns at him — the gratitude he expected, but there’s a hint of surprise in Bull’s tone, and Dorian won’t have that. “Even were there no political advantage to gain, I’d have done as much.” He’d have stolen her away if it’d come to that, if it were the only way to ensure her safety. Not that her remaining here among the slaves is _safe_ , but Bull would not allow harm to befall her.

“Sweet talker,” Bull says, and kisses Dorian’s forehead, then the bridge of his nose. His hands tighten around Dorian’s waist, pulling him closer. “Thank you.” Bull’s voice is steady but there’s something there, buried deep beneath, that Dorian isn’t sure if he should investigate. He lets himself be distracted from the thought. Bull’s stubble tickles his cheeks, but Dorian doesn’t pull away from it — it’s infinitely preferable than not touching Bull at all right now.

“C’mon,” Bull continues, and drops his hand under Dorian’s thigh to lift him up. Dorian smacks Bull on the chest.

“Oh, not tonight,” he protests, because while he would feel incredibly powerful standing before the Archon and assembled upper crust with bite marks on his inner thighs, he’s not sure he’s up for the physicality of it. Not if he needs to appear at all put-together tomorrow.

Bull huffs a laugh and pinches Dorian’s side, the brute, and Dorian kindly doesn’t bat his hands away. Bull kisses his cheek. “Just want to cuddle, kadan.”

Dorian lets him Bull carry him to the bed then, setting him down amongst the mess of linens — Dorian’s forbidden any of the slaves from tending to his room, and Bull’s always made the bed in the morning. Bull stretches out next to him and Dorian rolls onto his side to face him, and then moves to straddle Bull’s waist, curling his hands over the tops of Bull’s shoulders.

Bull looks… distracted, to some extent, as though his mind lays elsewhere than this bedroom. Dorian leans forward and slides his hands up Bull’s neck, up to settle over Bull’s cheekbones. Bull closes his eye and Dorian leans forward, resting his ear above Bull’s heart.

Bull breathes out on a long sigh eventually, when Dorian’s so relaxed he’s halfway to sleep; when Dorian sits up, Bull opens his eye. “How’s the party planning going? Big day tomorrow, yeah?”

Dorian keeps his hands where they are, his fingers curved around Bull’s cheeks, his thumbs resting under Bull’s eye sockets. “We’ve almost everything planned. There remain a handful of things to implement to ensure our honored guests are treated with the respect they warrant, but Mother has taken that on personally. She has more to lose than I do so it will go swimmingly, I’m sure.”

“Good. Marcus has passed out assignments.” One side of Bull’s mouth quirks up, and even that half-hearted bit of smile soothes some of the worry in Dorian’s chest. “I’m gonna stand around and look imposing.”

“You’re very good at that,” Dorian replies, pressing a kiss to Bull’s jaw. “Make sure no one stabs me in the back while I’m working the floor.”

“I can manage the literal.” Bull frowns, and Dorian fights against the urge to _ask_ , to have Bull lay out for him whatever is going on in his skull; Dorian should _know_ , after all. He should be able to figure it out. “You keep your eyes open for the figurative shit though.”

Dorian has little doubt that the gossipmongers will be out in full force, but he has a thick skin and so few fucks to give about the opinion of so many of the figures who will be there. “I’m counting it as a success if no one is assassinated. With so many in attendance, it’s only a matter of time before the youngest Coriolanus brat brings up his father’s bastards and the spells come out.”

“Still sounds like my job,” Bull says.

Dorian gives him that. “Two of the magisters named by Alexius will be present. I can approach them with tact, or I can call them out in front of the Archon and publicly shame them. In the event of the latter, your skills may be required.”

“Just point me to the vints who need their heads bashed in,” Bull says, and Dorian finds himself taking comfort in Bull’s straightforward malice.

He watches the way Bull’s mouth curves in a smile, the muscles shifting in his jaw, the way his eyes aren’t crinkling. Not a real smile. Bull’s usually better at faking them; it’s rarely a good sign when Dorian can notice something’s off so easily.

Dorian slides both of his hands around Bull’s massive neck, digging his fingertips into the thick muscle above his shoulders, and kisses him, their teeth clacking together with the force of it.

When Dorian pulls back, Bull starts to sit up, following him; and Dorian stills and they kiss, and kiss.

 

==

 

The knock on the door to his rooms is most unwelcome. He’s been elbows-deep in paperwork since he met with the solicitor this morning — and surprisingly grateful for the last decade of keeping the books for the Chargers as well, what with the numbers provided him for the estate’s income and outputs of recent years. His mother had been disapproving of his desire to review the work himself, and at such a preposterous time — _my child, that’s why we pay these men_ — but he needs to acquaint himself with their accounts. It is boring if important work, and ultimately a distraction given the event occurring this evening — and the pounding on the door has broken his much-needed concentration.

“I’m busy!”

The door opens regardless and Dorian turns his head, preparing to shout, only to be drawn up short by the woman standing in the doorway.

“Mae...?”

Maevaris Tilani smirks at him, one hand perched confidently at her waist, hip cocked. She’s just as he remembers: stunning, dressed collar to toe in blue, of course, with her curling blond hair pulled back into an artful coiff that he knows she's always taken great pride in doing herself. Maker, but looking at her it’s as though no time has passed at all since the last time they’d spoken in Minrathous, before everything went to shit.

“Are you going to sit there with your mouth gaping open forever, you aged peacock, or are you going to greet me properly?” She spreads her arms and he’s up from the desk without a second thought, taking her up in a hug, the intensity of which makes her laugh. “Such affection,” she says, and when they part she holds him at the shoulder, scrutinizing his face.

“Oh good,” she says, and when he lifts a questioning eyebrow at her, she continues, “I’ve gotten to you before politics have. I wanted to meet the Dorian I’ve missed these last few years.”

“ _That_ Dorian was a disaster on legs and will, Maker-willing, be eliminated from everyone’s minds as I navigate this evening,” Dorian replies.

She laughs delicately and steps back from him. “We don’t have much time to catch up, do we.”

“Unfortunately not.” He waves a hand at the writing desk stacked high with papers. “But you will be in attendance tonight, and play the role of my savior when I look particularly murderous.”

“ _Never_ ,” Maevaris says, frowning at him. “That would be a spectacular ascension to the Magisterium. I endorse it.” She takes him by the hand, and squeezes his fingers in hers. “My dear cousin Varric wrote to me about your plans here, Dorian. I wanted to ensure you knew of my support before you entered the den of snakes.”

“Unfortunately, I arrived to such a den several days ago.” He grips her hand in turn, and focuses on the strength of her smile. He’s missed her. He’s surprised at the intensity of the feeling, washing over him all at once; and he’s grateful for it, and for sincere allies when he’s uncertain of his moorings.

She leans in and kisses his cheek. “Be safe tonight.”

He kisses her cheek in turn, and narrows his eyes. “Do you truly think it dangerous?”

Maevaris looks at him as though he were the young man he was when he left Tevinter... and he concedes that it’s deserved. She steps back from their embrace and folds her hands delicately in front of her. “I haven’t been idle since the Inquisition defeated Corypheus. Any information the Inquisition gleaned from Alexius was passed my way eventually, and I’ve done what I could to ferret out the bastards who would see Tevinter perverted into their over-nostalgic idealization. Archon Silva has not and likely will never address the matter of the Venatori publicly, but his reticence in the matter has given me the space I need to address concerns myself.”

“Yourself,” Dorian repeats, and Maevaris laughs at him.

“My darling, you’ve lived with a spy for many years — surely you’ve better control on your expressions.” She reaches forward and pats his cheek, and Dorian bats her hand away before he thinks twice about it. She does nothing so quaint as grinning, but her mouth arcs in a wide smile, and she takes his hand in hers. “We’ll discuss my methods later. You should get ready now, don’t you think.”

“I’ve already one mother,” Dorian says, but he squeezes her fingers in a tight grip before pulling his hand from hers, “The Maker would never be so cruel as to inflict another upon me.”

“I will see you tonight,” Maevaris replies, and leaves him to his preparations.

 

==

 

With how chaotic the household must be in the lead-up to their guests’ arriving, he doesn’t expect Bull to be able to see him before the ball begins. He’s pleasantly surprised when the heavy knock comes on his door while he’s working at the ridiculous clasps on his tunic. Bull enters without waiting for his say-so, and goes straight for the overtunic Dorian laid out across his bed.

Dorian leaves the tunic half-undone and turns to him, touches the dip of his back. Dorian watches what tension’s built up over the day bleed out of the line of Bull’s shoulders, as though Dorian’s fingers have the power to siphon it away — Dorian steps closer, pressing his palm flat, and Bull goes still.

“I didn’t expect you to be able to attend to me,” Dorian says, and Bull turns to face him, the overtunic held loosely in his great hands.

“Quinten’s covering for me,” Bull explains, and passes the overtunic to Dorian so he can handle the fastenings Dorian’s neglected. Dorian doesn’t know who Quinten is, has given up learning all of the slaves’ names — he’s getting far better at acting as though it doesn’t bother him, the disregard — but he nods, and watches Bull’s face as he works.

Dorian lifts his chin when Bull’s hands reach the clasps at his throat, and he passes Bull the overtunic. Bull holds it for him as he slides his arms into it, and then picks up the robe off of the bed and does the same. Dorian begins to tie it shut with a length of soft gold cord and Bull stops him, laying his hands over Dorian’s and taking the cord from him.

Dorian closes his eyes. Doesn’t intend to sway into Bull’s space but does regardless. Bull’s hands still at his waist, cord taught in his fingers, and Dorian breathes out slowly, then draws his lower lip into his mouth. “Thank you.”

Bull’s hands stay level with his waist, fingers wrapped around the cord there, and Dorian swallows, his throat clicking. “You look good,” Bull says, voice low, and Dorian’s gut is already tightening when he adds, “never wanted to fuck a magister before.”

Bull’s fingers are solid against Dorian’s waist, and when Dorian leans forward they hold him in place with Bull’s effortless strength. “And you haven’t yet. It’s hours until I’m instated.”

Bull removes his hands from the cord at Dorian’s waist, and he reaches up and raises the hood of the robe. He adjusts it until he apparently likes how it looks, and steps away from Dorian, hands folding behind his back in a modified parade rest.

"You're gonna do great tonight," Bull tells him, and Dorian nods. He is. He's going to be positively spectacular. With Bull's eye on him all evening, and with Mae's more obvious support, Dorian will put on a Maker-damned show.

"Come to my room after," Dorian says, and Bull nods, one edge of his mouth tilting up, then swoops into Dorian’s space and musses him up with a long, firm kiss that Dorian feels at the root of him.

“Knock ‘em dead,” Bull whispers against his lips, and Dorian huffs out a laugh. If only.

 

=

 

It’s grand.  Well, beautiful. Impressive. An armful of other adjectives that each clamor at the forefront of Dorian’s mind. Intimidating. Andraste’s tits, the last time anyone in this room gave him more than a passing thought was when he was young and reckless, and isn’t that a sobering notion.

It goes well then, all things considered. There are introductions, and then the vote. Those magisters in attendance raise their voices accordingly, and those unable to attend have submitted their votes to be read aloud in absentia. Dorian’s unsurprised by the nays, recognizing several of his father’s rivals’ names, but the vote seems largely symbolic with Archon Silva present.

He’s rather delighted that Magisters Tarquin and Hortensis, Alexius’s old compatriots, both vote in the affirmative.

Archon Silva reviews and confirms the vote, and announces Dorian's successful induction into the Magisterium. There's measured applause, more than Dorian had expected regardless of how many had voted in his favor, and the Archon turns to him and clasps his hand firmly. It's surreal, to stand before the man and accept the invitation. He was raised for this — or some variation on it, some hopes more grand than others — and with his self-exile and his behavior before it he hadn't imagined it would come to pass, regardless of how he had told himself one day he would return to Tevinter.

His father was always alive in those scenarios, of course.

The spectacle concluded, he turns from the Archon and is faced with a room full of people who all want to wish him well. Few have returned to what they were doing previously, and most are turned to him as though he’s the most fascinating thing in the world. He finds the attention makes him uncomfortable, strangely enough. How he’s changed.

Dorian breathes in slowly and lifts his chin. It's the perfect time to approach Magisters Tarquin and Hortensis, or find Mae to discuss—

A hand closes around Dorian's shoulder and he turns back to see that Archon Silva has not left his side. "Surely you'll entertain an old man for a stretch of time," Silva says.

Dorian laughs, the sound less composed than he would've liked. "What amount of man would I be were I to deny you now, Archon."

Silva chuckles, and together they stroll along the walkway that loops around the ballroom. He’d not thought of it before, but the room’s not unlike Halamshiral — which he will never mention to his mother. What a disaster it would be, for something in their home to resemble a treasure of Orlais.

“How fortunate we are to have you in our presence,” Silva tells him, and Dorian smiles in kind. A charming man, the archon, assuming one didn’t find themselves standing in his way. Dorian’s father had been at odds with him frequently, and likely only survived it because they’d known each other as young men. “Surely the Inquisition is of more interest to you than the Magisterium.”

“That’s unfair of you to say.” Dorian sips his wine and looks out across the gathered assembly of the elite. Would it be any loss to set the entire room aflame? “You can never feel truly at ease in the south. So many _dogs_.”

Silva breathes out a laugh. Dorian’s struck by how young he seems — surely he’s in his seventies, one misstep away from an attempt on his life or a failed heart. Dorian had thought him ancient, before. Seventy seems... almost relatable, now. “You’ve been amongst the barbarians for years. How has that influenced you, I wonder?”

Dorian looks at the archon out of the corner of his eye: the man’s not tactless enough to ask exactly what he wants to know directly, and there _are_ several ways to interpret his words. “It is reasonable to say I am not the same man as he who left Tevinter. However, I remain loyal to and fond of her in equal measure. As for any designs I may have upon her: I’m only as ambitious as any man.”

Silva arches one of his lined brows and drinks from his goblet. He looks out across the ballroom. “How prettily you speak, Magister Pavus.”

“A true compliment from a politician of your caliber, Archon,” Dorian replies, and Silva lifts his goblet. Dorian raises his own and they both drink, and watch the guests dance and gossip. Dorian wouldn’t describe what he feels as happiness, much less contentment — there’s too much here, the lurking rot just under the surface. But there’s something… satisfying about this evening, as well. About his standing beside the archon as a magister — not precisely what his parents had envisioned, but nearly so.

In time his attention wanders to Bull, as is its wont. Bull stands near the doors leading to the gardens, settled into parade rest, staring straight ahead even as socialites flutter about him. One of the women — one of the youngest Vetranio, if Dorian recalls correctly, she should be attending a Circle, not yet married — touches Bull’s broad chest and giggles before returning to her friends. Dorian imagines she must be one amongst many, all of them taking their amusement in the domesticated oxman. Dorian at that age may have done the same.

“May I interrupt?”

Lucretia appears at Dorian’s elbow like a fucking despair demon and it takes all of his self-control not to startle. She bows to the archon, who smiles indifferently at her, and takes Dorian by the arm before leading him away like a child.

They walk together down to the dance floor, and past it. She steers him towards the elaborate dragon of ice adorning the bar, and then seems to think better of it, turning them both towards the gardens. When Lucretia pauses for a moment, Dorian eyes her. “Do you have a destination in mind?”

“Away from prying eyes,” she replies, and were it not for the pained expression on her face Dorian would be alarmed at the suggestion. The gardens seem to meet her needs, and together they walk out of the door past Bull — who continues to stare resolutely ahead, trained and obedient, how everyone _loves_ him — and down the stairs leading to the path through the hedges.

“You’ve succeeded,” Dorian tells her once he’s fairly certain no one’s paying them any direct attention. She frowns, tightening her hold on his arm. Her nails — manicured now, and _long_ — dig into his skin and he regrets his tunic’s not having sleeves.

She laughs, her voice a higher pitch than he’s heard it. “It would have benefited us both had you accepted House Orosius’s offer.”

It takes Dorian a moment to understand what she’s referring to. “The ball, you mean. The introduction of a new magister, held under the roof of another? You must think me a fool.”

She opens her mouth — and the glare on her face is potent enough to make him genuinely relieved when she shuts it again without speaking. She loosens her grip on his arm and breathes out slowly, and they’re both silent as they walk through the hedges towards the fountain at the center of the gardens.

Dorian vaguely remembers playing here, hiding from his minders between clumps of leaves — though when he was six, he had fled from a particularly boring stretch of studying and Marcus had found him immediately and pulled him from the hedge. When he was older, he realized they must have known exactly where he was since the beginning, and simply pretended to lose him… at least until his time was better spent on other things than playing, of course.

He finds he rather despises the gardens now.

“House Orosius was impressed with your own offer,” Lucretia says finally, when they’re near to the fountain. She releases his arm and walks to the fountain’s edge, sitting on the dark marble and folding her hands in her lap. “You, or your solicitors, have a strong understanding of our business.”

Dorian scoffs. He ends up standing next to her, facing the dancing elf sculpted from marble at the center of the fountain. The water erupts from the elf’s outstretched hand as though it were a spell, and the elf’s face is ecstatic with her newfound skill. His father had loved this fountain: it represented the delight and power to be found in one’s own magic, Halward had told him.

Dorian’s eyes catch on an imperfection on the elf’s shoulder, a shame given the quality of the sculpting. He shifts to get a better look and his breath catches in his throat. He’d never noticed… It’s not an imperfection; it’s a brand. He’d… never realized the elf was a slave. Of course she was happy. The delight and power to be found in one’s own magic — the _power_ of it, Maker fucking damn it.

“I haven’t even told you the bad news,” Lucretia says, and Dorian finally looks away from the statue to where she’s seated.

“What in the world are you dancing around?” he snaps, and she tips her chin up. The way she holds herself reminds him of Vivienne — never one to descend to the level of whomever was frustrating her. He’s impressed by her composure, despite himself.

“I expect you will receive the details of our engagement tomorrow afternoon, after they have been dictated and reviewed.”

Dorian gapes at her. He feels as though he’s been plunged directly into cold water, or had such a spell backfire and coat him in ice. “I beg your pardon.”

She looks away from him, out across the gardens. “I’ve spent years building a business that I have ensured I am wholly responsible for, and I will _not_ have it taken from me for the good of your house. My station within my family may mark me as expendable, but I refuse to be the means by which House Pavus rises above the actions of its infantile heir.”

Dorian ignores the weight settling like lead into the bottom of his stomach and sits down on the edge of the fountain, too little space between them for the anger arching through his veins. “You are an exceedingly exacting woman, Lucretia.”

She laughs, bitter and sharp, and for one absurd moment Dorian envisions himself pushing her back into the fountain and freezing the water around her. Sweet Andraste.

“I don’t appreciate my endeavors being twisted into this farce,” she replies, and she turns towards him, her knees nearly knocking into his. “Given your perversions, I’ve no doubt you find this idea equally distasteful.”

“I’ve no bloody idea what I’m being accused of. You approached _me_ in Dairsmuid,” he snarls, and then immediately forces back the… fuck, the _shame_ curdling in his gut. He’s above their judgments, their petty sniping, he’s withstood hours of knowing glances and smirks — he refuses to let it get to him. He’s a different man than he was when he left Tevinter, and he’s no longer vulnerable to their damnable opinions. He’s beyond that. He’s _better_ than that.

She smiles at him as though she’s gotten a hit in regardless, and pushes herself up onto her feet. She brushes her hands against her skirt, front and back, and looks down at him. He feels as though he needs to take a long bath. She looks as though she knows she’s drawn blood.

“I _had_ wondered if it were simply the feeling of controlling something so powerful that attracted you to the oxman, but you allow him to degrade you. I’m to sacrifice my life to be wed to an invert.” She closes her eyes as she exhales, and purses her lips.

He feels numb, and when she shakes her head and turns on her heel, stalking back towards the ball, he remains behind. He could have said any number of things. They’re on the tip of his tongue, dismissals of her _business_ , jabs regarding what other prospects she obviously doesn’t have, truly insightful remarks about the desperation of her house. But with each second that passes they dissolve on his tongue and he remains seated at the fountain, feeling incredibly like he did as a teenager, when he first noticed how handsome his tutor was.

He remembers in exquisite detail the last time he was called an invert.

He makes himself return to the ball after a time: it’s bad form to hide oneself away from one’s own celebration. He speaks with Magister Seneca about the Archon’s plans for funding the infrastructure improvements needed in Vyrantius, and with Magister Prima about how unfortunate it was that the Divine couldn’t attend, surely he’s in good health. His mother draws him into a conversation about the rising cost of importing Antivan wine, and his remarks that he became fond of more effective liquor while in the south garner polite laughter from the assembled alti. It’s only once they’ve moved on to another topic that Dorian questions each smile, if they’re thinking of his misspent youth, of his drunken escapades through the beds of half the brothels in Qarinus. He’s a fucking magister, and all of them see a selfish child a step away from another tantrum.

He finally begs off, citing how overwhelming the evening has been in combination with such delicious wine, and he clasps his mother’s wrist and draws her hand up to place a kiss between her wide bangles and rings. She smiles indulgently at him. His own mouth twists into a responding smile, and he withdraws from the room before he does something stupid like acknowledge the jolt of affection he felt at her expression.

In the confines of his rooms he doesn’t bother disrobing, gets halfway through pushing the gold bands off of his wrists before abandoning the attempt and sliding onto the floor at the foot of his bed, one arm thrown across the mattress. He drops his head to the comforter, soft silk pressing against his skin, and breathes in. Out. Pays attention to the rise and fall of his chest, the same way he does whenever Bull blindfolds him, narrowing his attention so effectively. Bull… Bull probably saw his exit, will likely find his way up here sooner or later. That’s good. That will be good.

He startles awake when the door to his room opens. He jerks up from the bed, his neck twingeing, and blinks until his eyes adjust to the light spilling in from the hallway, until he can make out Bull’s broad frame. “‘Time is it?” he asks, his voice low in his throat, and he pushes himself up to his feet.

Bull closes the door and the room’s cast back into darkness. “I didn’t see you leave.”

It’s absurd that it feels like a knife in the gut, Bull’s saying that. Dorian bites back his immediate response, _what a fortunate thing I wasn’t stabbed in the back while your attention was elsewhere_ , and drags a hand over his face, then up to muss his hair. Such a reaction would be unreasonable of him. “I lost my appetite for being the center of attention.”

Bull doesn’t tease him, doesn’t take that opening to crack a joke about how Dorian _loves_ being the center of attention. Maker, he must look awful then, or Bull sees something else in his expression. Bull moves closer to him, reaching forward to wrap his hands around Dorian’s waist, and Dorian glances at the door to ensure it’s shut.

Bull follows his gaze. “Want me to lock it?”

Dorian shakes his head. It’s light enough in the room that he can see Bull’s furrowed brow, his pursed lips, and Dorian can’t stand to be looked at with that expression, with such concern right now. He has no need of concern. He takes a step away from Bull, pulling out of his grip. What he needs is to…

“I want you on the bed.”

Bull opens his mouth, and Dorian watches him reconsider before shutting it again. Dorian’s distantly grateful for that. He feels as though he’s been pulled tight from each end and twisted up like the strands of a rope.

Bull strips off his tunic, dropping it at the foot of the bed. He sits and takes off his boots, then unties his trousers and smalls and adds them to the pile. He stands naked in front of Dorian's bed, hands at his sides, head tipped down enough that Dorian can look him straight in the eye. His shoulders are rounded forward and his good knee's bent as though he's trying to make himself appear smaller, and Dorian's instantly repulsed by the idea, by the very thought of the Iron Bull being anything than what he is, especially here.

Dorian tugs off his overtunic and lets it fall to the floor as he steps towards Bull. He twists off the remaining jewelry adorning his arms, the heavy rings he added from the collection kept on his dressing table. He pulls the gold cuffs from his ears — the trailing gold chains tickle his fingers, but they're dropped soon enough as well.

The fastenings on his tunic are easier now somehow, in the dark. Bull reaches up and curls his hands around Dorian's anyway, until Dorian drops his arms to his sides, letting Bull finish for him. Appropriate, Dorian thinks. He can start the process, remove the pieces of himself that no longer feel natural, but Bull will finish it for him.

Bull pushes the tunic back over Dorian's shoulders, but pauses when the fabric tugs Dorian's wrists back, restraining him. Dorian shakes his head once, and Bull lets the garment fall to the floor.

"I want you on the bed," Dorian repeats, and Bull moves as requested, sitting down and pushing himself up the mattress until only his heels hang over the edge. He props himself up on his elbows and watches Dorian move between his feet — Dorian feels more powerful in this moment than he has since the vote.

He slides his palms down his stomach, keeping his eyes on Bull to watch Bull's cock thicken against his thigh, to see the jump of Bull's throat when he swallows. Dorian unties his own trousers — and ducks his head to laugh low, under his breath, when he remembers his shoes. He toes them off, grabbing Bull's foot to steady himself, and when he looks up again Bull's smiling wide at him, his eye crinkling. The sight strikes Dorian between his ribs like a bolt of electricity.

"C'mere, kadan," Bull says, shifting his weight onto one elbow so he can stretch a hand out towards Dorian.

Dorian laughs again, and it sounds thick even to his own ears. He clears his throat and kicks off his trousers and smalls, and climbs onto the bed to kneel between Bull's spread legs, to reach for Bull's hand. Bull leans back and tugs Dorian forward in one motion, and Dorian has to drop his free hand to Bull's chest to keep himself from falling against him. Bull looks surprised for half a moment by the move before blinking the expression away, and slides his free hand to Dorian's hip, his long fingers curving around Dorian's arse. Dorian presses back into his hold, closing his eyes, reveling in the strength behind it, and he thinks of the oil they both know is in the top drawer of the side table, of having Bull work him open until he can’t think of anything at all.

And then, unbidden, a memory springs from the back of his mind, disgust and disappointment intermingling on his father's face: _At least tell me you don't let them degrade you. It's bad enough, Dorian..._

His eyes snap open and he must have tensed, because Bull's hand has stopped and his forehead is furrowed. "I'm fine," Dorian says immediately, his voice overloud, and he grimaces and shakes his head.  "I'm fine," he repeats, and he takes Bull by the wrist, drawing his hand away from his arse. "I want to fuck you tonight, that's all."

Bull doesn’t say anything, but he turns his hand in Dorian’s grip, threading their fingers together, and when Dorian hazards a glance up at him, his expression is shuttered. Damnit. Dorian draws Bull’s hand to his lips, kisses Bull’s knuckles, and Bull exhales slowly, loudly. Something passes over his face that Dorian can't read, but by the time it's gone Bull looks more relaxed. Draws his thumb across Dorian's bottom lip. Smiles at him, too tender.

Were Dorian any less uncentered, he’d prod at that, decrypt what's going on in Bull's mind; but if Bull wants to keep it to himself there's little to be done. Dorian's thrown himself at that locked door enough times... and it isn't as though Dorian's not doing the same, right now. They'll talk. Not now.

"Turn over, amatus," Dorian says, and sits back on his feet to give Bull the room he needs to do so. Bull moves in starts and stops, and Dorian realizes Bull had been standing still on marble floors for most of the evening, shoulders back and hands folded. He'd done it because it'd been asked of him. Because — ultimately — Dorian had asked it of him.

Dorian leans forward and rests his forehead against the back of Bull's thigh once he's situated, closing his eyes and wrapping his hands around Bull's thick legs, the fingers of his left hand pressing up against the bottom of Bull's bum knee. "I will never understand," Dorian says, and Bull shifts beneath him.

"You having a conversation with yourself down there?" Bull's voice is muffled, his head resting on his crossed arms. "S'fine if you are, but should I be paying attention?"

Dorian laughs, and draws himself up, rubbing his hand into Bull's knee and relishing the low moan he receives in response. "I will never understand the depth with which you love me," he says, and Bull angles his head on his arms as much as he can with his horns.

"You should," Bull says. "What's going on in your head?"

"Very many things, few of which require conversation," Dorian replies promptly, and leaves the bed to acquire the oil.

He's not as mesmerized by Bull's arse as Bull seems to be with his, but he's not impervious to the sight before him. He kisses the liberal smattering of freckles at the top of each cheek and Bull rumbles a laugh beneath him, before reaching back to dig his fingers into his own cheek to pull himself open.

"Venhedis," Dorian breathes out against Bull's skin, and Bull laughs against the pillow.

The first time Dorian fucked Bull, it had felt as though he were taming something ungovernable, and yet less about Bull's being a qunari than his being _Bull_ , a man who regularly joked about how he was at least two of Dorian slapped together, and just as pretty. Who took great joy from wringing pleasure from Dorian until he begged, and past that point. Who kept such tight control over himself, his actions, his words, as to rarely be caught off-guard even in something as ever-changing as the Inquisition.

But Bull had lost himself when they'd fucked, if only for a moment, and it'd burned itself into Dorian's mind — Bull's arm thrown across his face, his teeth buried in his own skin, his other hand ripping the sheets to shreds. It had seemed to surprise him after. He'd been uncharacteristically quiet, and characteristically handsy, pulling Dorian to him once they were the both of them cleaned up. They'd agreed in halting half-sentences that it'd been quite good, though nothing to displace their usual activities.

Now, Dorian simply feels desperate, as though he has something to prove to the both of them, as though the anxiety he can feel clawing at the back of his throat can be outlasted, beaten down, by the force of this.

Dorian wastes little time before Bull is open and breathing heavily under him, before he grasps Bull at the hips and slides into him. Bull shudders underneath him, the great expanse of his shoulders shaking with each thrust of Dorian's hips, Dorian gripping his hips hard enough that surely there will be marks tomorrow, the width of Dorian's palms, with ten pockmarks where his nails lay.

"Come for me, amatus," Dorian hisses, and he watches the muscles of Bull's back begin to quake, the way Bull’s shoulder strains when he reaches for his cock. "My love, my love..."

Bull shudders, lowering his head between his shoulders, and Dorian leans forward until his forehead touches Bull's arching back. When Bull reaches back and loops a hand around Dorian's thigh, Dorian shakes apart.

Dorian collapses onto the bed next to Bull, a hand still grasping at Bull's hip, and Bull gives himself time to come down. Eventually shifts onto his side so he's facing Dorian..

Bull threads his thick fingers through Dorian’s hair, tugging his head up enough so they look at each other. “You gonna tell me what’s eating you?”

Dorian looks at Bull’s face in the dim light pouring through the window. Bull would laugh if Dorian called him beautiful, but it’s what comes to mind: surrounded by the opulence of his home, of the guests in their fineries, Bull stands out like a beacon off the coast during a storm. Dorian’s not sure what he’s done in his life to warrant this man.

He reaches for Bull’s face, lays his thumb over the curve of Bull’s cheek. Bull turns into the touch, kissing the side of his palm, and Dorian’s voice breaks when he says, “I had imagined I’d retain some modicum of control over my own person upon my return.”

Bull tips his head to the side questioningly, and Dorian continues, “My mother made it clear to me when I first arrived that I’ve responsibilities to House Pavus.” Bull frowns. Dorian can see the protests forming on his tongue, so he forges on: “I’ve no first cousins, no one closely related enough to be considered a Pavus. There are distant relatives of course, but to pass my title to them would be to allow House Pavus to be subsumed by another.”

“What happened tonight, kadan?”

Dorian closes his eyes and swallows. He lies back down, dropping his hand to his side. He keeps his eyes shut, but he can feel Bull shift on the mattress beside him, stretching out on his back, his shoulder near to Dorian’s head. Bull’s arm slides down Dorian’s back, his hand resting at Dorian’s waist.

Dorian feels infinitely small next to him, in his hold. He finds he prefers that to being the center of attention.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [fiveyearmission](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyearmission) saves my bacon literally every day and is a rock star.
> 
> This chapter is pretty intense. The file was named "D:" on my computer. If you have any questions about the tags, please feel free to shoot me an ask on tumblr and I'll let you know details. Self-care > silly fic. ♥

Bull wakes with sun in his eyes, disoriented for a moment — there aren’t windows in his room downstairs and he’s already adjusted to waking up to that darkness. There’s a weight across his chest — Dorian. _Dorian_. Bull tightens his grip.

Last night: Dorian’s suppressed anger, every action considered, and his unwillingness to explain the cause of it all.

He knows he could move Dorian off of him without Dorian waking — when it's early enough, Dorian wouldn't wake if Andraste herself appeared before him  — but he figures he can take the risk of being late to his morning duties for this, for a lazy morning after a party, if the ball could be called that. First time in a while Bull's been to a party he didn't leave absolutely shitfaced; though he's not sure if getting liquored up would've made last night any easier, would've helped Bull handle Dorian's controlled expression and carefully enunciated words.

It took Dorian a while, as though he were waiting for Bull to sleep, but once he opened his mouth he didn't hesitate for a second, like a messenger reading a notice:

“House Orosius and my mother have been in talks beyond those to settle the sale. Lucretia and I have been found to be a match. I expect the marriage will take place within the year.”

Just like that. Bull had kept his mouth shut and pulled Dorian closer to him, held him while his breathing sped up and settled down, until he managed to work through it enough to sleep.

Bull knows that’s not the end of it, that Dorian’s not anything resembling okay. A frigging marriage on the horizon aside, Dorian’s got too much justifiable shit built up around his parents telling him who he can and should fuck. So Bull knows that Dorian's not handling it — at all, let alone _well_ — that he's put a marker on it and will get back to it later. Bull would've said that was a good thing once, back in Ferelden: you bookmark what you can't deal with right now and get back to it when you can. But this — there’s no time to sort it out later. This bullshit will wear you down.

If that's what Dorian wants to do with it though, Bull's not gonna force him to do otherwise. Damn, Bull's not gonna say he didn't enjoy the sex, but given the whole of Dorian's reaction last night Bull also doesn't want to push him. He's gonna be what Dorian needs him to be, and he won't mess that up.

Dorian finally stirs with the sun spilling across his face, swearing under his breath and turning his face into Bull's chest. He wakes more from that — opens his eyes and blinks up at Bull. "You... good morning." He pushes himself up and sits, rubbing a hand across his eyes and then swearing again when he realizes he forgot to remove his makeup. "You should have reminded me."

"Had more important things to do," Bull says, and sits up himself, reaching for Dorian before he can stumble off the bed to see to his face. "Don't run away yet."

"I'm not — _running away_ ," Dorian snaps, and then frowns, leaning into Bull's shoulder. He lets out a great yawn, turning his mouth against Bull, and closes his eyes. Bull half-expects him to fall asleep like that, but Dorian gives a full-body jerk and sits up straight, narrowing his eyes at Bull in the sunlight. "You stayed. Is that a problem?"

"I've got my priorities sorted just how they're supposed to be," Bull replies, and Dorian's expression softens before he leans back against Bull.

Bull spreads his palm across Dorian's back and rubs at his sleep-warm skin, lets the silence linger for a long while before finally asking, "What's your schedule today?"

Dorian snorts. "Maker knows. At some point I plan to get as drunk as possible. Would it not be equally as damning to myself, I would do it in as public a setting as possible, to humiliate my mother."

Bull lifts his shoulder, bouncing Dorian's head gently — he swats Bull's stomach with a lazy hand, then settles his palm there. "Not the best idea now that you're a public figure."

"The tragedy of importance." Dorian rubs a finger across Bully's belly. Bull glances down and isn't hugely surprised that Dorian's wiped a bit of his eyeliner across Bull's skin. Dorian chuckles and flicks his stomach lightly. "And now you'll have to bathe with me. Another tragedy, surely."

"Bossy," Bull replies, thinking about the time, how pissed Marcus will be to have him gone for longer, and knows it doesn't matter in the end. Not in the face of Dorian, tired and mussed and drained dry from politics and social shit. Bull knows his priorities.

“I love you,” he says, and kisses the top of Dorian's mess of hair. Dorian hums softly, there are maybe syllables there, a tired but genuine response, and it just reaffirms it for Bull — he’ll do whatever the fuck he can to help.

 

==

 

Bull learned quick when he was younger and needed info fast that if you wanted gossip, you went to whoever worked at the bottom rung of the ladder. When your whole life was devoted to wiping somebody else's ass, it was pretty easy to get caught up in thinking of 'em as your main source of entertainment. Fuck, for slaves, they basically were — and nothing’s different in the Pavus household. Bull may not be getting the same up-close and personal introduction to the bullshit of Tevinter politics that Dorian is, but he’s gotten full exposure to the tasty bits.

"Did you see the Principia heir getting handsy with one of the dancing girls?" Wren says under her breath, as though everyone in the kitchen can’t hear every word anybody else says here. Bull takes slow bites of his breakfast so he can listen better, anyway.

“She’s married,” Clara replies with a gasp, as though it’s abnormal for the Tevinter elite to fuck anybody but their spouse. “She wouldn’t really, not in _public_.” That’s more understandable — fuck whoever you want, but make sure you keep it to yourself. In public, you’re expected to act your role.

“Ladies, if you please,” Marcus protests as he looks up from his own breakfast. Marcus had stared Bull down when he showed up in the kitchen hours late, missing prep for Mistress Faustina’s breakfast, but didn’t say anything. Bull’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. “You’ll give me indigestion.”

They both laugh and continue preparing lunch, talking about the food last night, the centerpieces, how old the archon looks. “Did you see Mistress Orosius? I’ve always thought she was beautiful.”

He expected the conversation to turn this way eventually; he's surprised it took this long. Maybe they were worried Marcus would be pissed at them for bringing their masters into the conversation, after Bull’d already made things bad by being late; Marcus just looks equally disinterested as he has for the rest of his meal. Bull keeps eating.

"She and Master Pavus went for a stroll together in the garden," Clara says.

"Well, he needs to marry _someone_ ," Wren replies, and then drops the potato she was peeling into the sink. Bull glances up in the long silence after it and she's turned to stare at him, eyes wide, mouth open, like he's about to charge. That's the thing you don't think about when you end up anywhere without a significant chunk of qunari  — it ain't just the people disseminating the stereotype of the brutish oxman who'll stare at you. Fucking everybody gets in on it. "I'm, I know, I didn't mean."

Bull keeps his sigh to himself and smiles easy at her. "He needs to marry someone," he agrees, and she nods and jerks back around to the sink and her duties. Neither of the girls talk again, and when Bull finishes his breakfast he looks up at Marcus, who's been watching him for a good two minutes, clearly trying to get a read on him.

Bull doubts he got anything. What he said is, at the end of the day, true. He doesn't like it, but in the privacy of his mind he's not gonna sugarcoat it either. When him and Dorian were everywhere but Tevinter, the only responsibilities Dorian had were those he took on himself because he wanted to. As soon as they boarded Orosius's boat in Llomerryn, Dorian stepped into a role that came with its own rules. Alti are born to be as close to perfect as possible, reared to be powerful, trained to be ruthless, until the day they're paired off to ensure the next generation is even better. Dorian's seethed about the methodology of it enough for Bull to know it backwards and forwards. It's fucked up. And it's what Tevinter does, and now they're back in Tevinter and Dorian's a magister.

Bull hates it, and then he's conflicted about it — which he fucking hates too. Dorian shouldn't have to do anything he doesn't want to, but Dorian wanted to take Tevinter by the short and curlies and the best way to do that's from the inside.

Dorian'd probably yell at him for thinking too much like a Qunari. Deservedly, Bull supposes.

"Bull," Marcus says once Bull's finished cleaning his dishes, and Bull turns to him. "Mistress Faustina should be expecting her breakfast now. Would you take it to her bedchambers?"

Bull keeps his suspicion off of his face and nods. One of the kitchen girls — Rehna, a little slip of an elf whose dark eyes go big whenever he looks at her — lifts an ornate golden tray from one of the counters and passes it to him. It's got all sorts of fancy crap on it, pastries and sausage and fucking pineapple of all things. Bull hasn't had pineapple in... shit, years. It makes his mouth water.

He gives Marcus one last nod and takes the tray out of the kitchen and up the back stairs to the second floor, where Faustina’s rooms are. There are a dozen things Bull could do around the estate that’d make better use of him than this, so Faustina must’ve asked for him personally — or Marcus is setting him up. Or both.

He knocks on the door to Faustina’s bedchamber and listens, opening it when he hears her call of permission to enter. The room’s larger even than Dorian’s, tapestries adorning the walls in swaths of black and rich golds and reds, depicting what he assumes is the great lineage of House Pavus, vint after vint standing tall and proud.

Faustina swans out of the attached washroom, a pale yellow robe wrapped tight around her. She looks him over once before gesturing to the writing desk in the middle of the room. “Place it there.” He does so, and stays standing next to the desk while she disappears behind a divider beside one of the room’s wardrobes. “You were part of the same Inquisition that my son devoted so much time to, yes?”

He crosses his arms behind his back and spreads his feet — figures he’ll be here for a while, if she’s trying to glean info from him. “Yes, mistress.”

“He must think me simple, to assume I’d accept his pretext that as an oxman you were eager for something — or someone — to follow. Does he think me simple?”

Orosius bought it; Bull’d hazard that most vints would, given the stereotypes that Dorian started out with. But he's not surprised Faustina's seen through it; Dorian's always complained that she's devilishly clever. “I couldn't say, mistress.”

“I imagine you must care for him.”

He's not sure there's a response for that, so he keeps his mouth shut; she doesn't say anything either, until she moves around the divider, dressed now. He’s a little surprised she doesn’t have a body slave to assist her.

She sits at the desk and takes up a fork, but doesn't dismiss him. After several minutes, she cranes her neck to look up at him. "Has my son attached himself to you in turn?"

Bull represses the urge to shift on his feet. Even if he tells her nothing, she'll probably parse it out well enough. "It's not my place to put words in the mouth of my master, mistress."

"Of course," she says, and drinks the coffee on the tray. It seems she's having him stand here until she's finished her breakfast. He's not a greenhorn; he could do this for hours — though the look she shoots him every few minutes is still unnerving as all get out.

Eventually she leans back in her chair, placing her hands in her lap. "My son's proclivities aren't a secret, though many may have forgotten them since he threw his tantrum and ran away to the south. Others may put them aside in the face of his influence with the Inquisition. Most simply don't care. With that being understood, it's expected, particularly at his age, that he put the legacy of his house first. You know of responsibility, don't you, qunari?"

Bull ignores the tightening in his gut. His fingers clench into fists behind his back. "Yes, mistress."

"My son has a responsibility to provide an heir for House Pavus, as generations before him have done. He's squandered his chance at archon, but he'll be a powerful magister. Nevertheless, he will _also_ be the downfall of this house if he continues to deem himself more important than the many who precede him in the Pavus line. But he will hear none of this, you see. He wields his hurt like a horse wears blinders." She pushes back from the table and stands at her full height, barely meeting Bull's breast. Doesn’t seem to make a lick of difference to Bull’s brain though, because with her right in front of him all he can think about are tamassrans, who regardless of stature were always intimidating, especially when overseeing the bloodlines.

"We acted rashly when he was younger, and we've paid our dues these long years. With Halward's passing, it now falls on me to secure the future of House Pavus. Dorian's once-intended has been married for years, and has provided her new house with several children. However, there are still opportunities to be had for someone with my son's impressive credentials. I imagine he’s told you about that." She smiles thinly up at him, and he does shift this time, lets himself resettle his weight between his feet. He needs to figure out what she’s trying to get out of telling him this, what leverage she hopes to gain over Dorian. She must know Dorian told him of the engagement.

She holds up her open palm between them. “Give me that hideous eyepatch of yours.”

It’s so out of nowhere that the request doesn’t make sense to Bull at first, takes him a second to process it, and the instant he gets the words he takes a step back — _fucking damnit_. He stops mid-step, his arms falling to his sides. Too late.

Her smile twists into a self-satisfied smirk. “Do you disobey me, slave?”

Every inch of him aches with how much he wants to tell her to go fuck herself. He flexes the fingers of each hand so he doesn’t curl them into fists. “No, mistress.”

Her outstretched hand hasn’t wavered. “Then your eyepatch.”

He breathes in slowly, then reaches up and unties the leather around his horn. The patch itself is shaped to him, metal on leather, rests easy against what’s left of his socket even without the tie when he stands at rest, and so he has to tug it free of his face.

“Such scarring,” Faustina observes, closing her fingers around the patch when he drops it into her hand. “This is merely cosmetic then: do you require something with no functional purpose, slave?”

He puts his hands behind his back, wrapping one around the other’s wrist so he doesn’t do anything he’d regret. Dorian’s barely had any time in Tevinter. This is nothing. “No, mistress.”

She gathers the patch’s hanging leather into her hand and narrows her eyes, and the whole of it goes up in flames. His fingers tighten on his wrist, and he digs his teeth into his bottom lip. The leather burns easy, and the metal of the patch is soon covered in soot, _warping_ , fuck.

“Give me your hand, slave.”

Bull digs his nails into the skin around his wrist before letting go to bring a hand up between them. She drops the metal onto his palm and he bites the inside of his cheek to keep back the hiss when it immediately starts to burn.

“This is not your Inquisition. Whatever you are to my son means nothing here, regardless of what he’s promised you. Dorian will fulfill his duties to this house and to this country, and you will fulfill yours.” Faustina steps forward, and wipes her ash-marked hands off on the front of Bull’s tunic. “Now clean all this up.”

She leaves him alone in her chambers, and he stands still and struggles to breathe. His shoulders start shaking with each exhale and after a while he can’t hold his head up anymore, has to let it drop forward while his whole fucking body quakes. Each beat of his heart feels like a drum inside his head, like somebody’s taking a hammer to his brain every half a second, and he needs to—

He needs to stop. He needs to not do _anything_ except acknowledge this feeling, understand it at its roots — he does, he fucking does, he stood there when he could’ve reached out and taken her by the neck and squeezed until _damnit_ — and he compartmentalizes it, shoves it back, has to. He knows how to do that much. He can focus on his breathing, think of a billow expanding and closing; he can think past the pounding of his heart, listen for the breeze outside, the quiet sounds of life filtering through a open window. He can deal with this later.

Dorian did as much this morning — the least Bull can do is the same. Priorities.

He uncurls his hand from around the patch and the metal falls to the ground amidst the scattered ashes. He tears a strip off the bottom of his tunic and wraps it around the seething skin of his palm. He takes the breakfast tray back to the kitchen, and retrieves what he needs to clean the carpet.

Marcus intercepts him on his way back to Faustina’s rooms. He looks contrite, but Bull can pick the subtler emotion out of the expression on his face — grim satisfaction.

Bull brushes past him without speaking.

 

=

 

Elaine’s the only person in the kitchens when Bull finally has time to see to his hand. She rises from her seat at the long table where she’s been picking at her late lunch and peers around his arm as he rinses off the blistered skin in one of the washbasins.

“ _Maker_ , what happened?” All one hundred pounds of elf pushes against his side and he moves enough to let her get a hold of his wrist. “This is going to get infected.” She glances up at him and freezes for a moment, getting a good look of his face without the patch, before taking a steadying breath and looking back at his hand.

Some of the blisters have split — he couldn’t help it while scrubbing down the carpet in Faustina’s room, bandage or no — but they’ve drained fine and as long as he keeps ‘em clean…

“Dr Ansel should see this to,” Elaine says, and Bull lets her finish cleaning his hand and wrap it in the clean linen he’d pilfered from Dorian’s washroom. “Or…” She pauses, both in speaking and in her ministrations, and when she looks up at him she’s chewing on her lip. “The Healer would be able to treat this. You should go to him.”

“I’m all right,” Bull says, throat dry, the words cracking as they leave his mouth. He takes the rest of the linen from her stalled hands and finishes wrapping, tucking the end of the linen in under itself. "I don’t need a healer."

She looks unconvinced, but eventually nods and touches his wrist. She’s sad, when he looks at her, but her mouth’s a firm line. Strong. “Then when you do, please let me know.”

“I will,” he tells her — he’s not in the habit of underestimating people, but she frowns when she catches the lie. He didn’t expect that: kid her age shouldn’t know how to do that yet.

“You’re helping no one if you don’t,” she says, and squeezes his wrist.

Bull huffs a laugh, but knows it’s useless to argue with her. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“We’re in this together, Bull,” Elaine says, and Bull can’t find it in him to disagree.

 

==

 

By midday Bull's usually working with the freight guys, or touching base with Marcus to see about any special assignments, or helping set up for lunch. It’s not the smartest choice to have made, sitting in the kitchen while everybody bustles around doing their thing, but he couldn't give less of a fuck about the other stuff today. Elaine normally sees to the kids at this time though, and when she mentions this to Bull he follows her readily. She seems to get that.

She keeps looking back at him though, like she wants to say something, but she doesn't. Good of her.

The kids are sorting laundry when they find them, and Amelia drops the garment in her hand when they walk in. “Bull!” She jumps onto her feet and then stalls. Must’ve gotten a good look at him. Eyepatches are pretty neat-looking to kids, the Inquisitor’s Lucy had been frigging fascinated by it and loved how he changed the story of why he needed it every time she asked.

But scars… Amelia’s face — she’d looked bored before, but her face contorts into a fearful kind of surprise when she looks up at him. “Your eye…”

“Hey kid,” Bull says, and he sits down on the bedroll nearest the wall, far enough away so — hopefully —  none of the kids in the room get too scared by him. He lifts a shoulder in a shrug and smiles at her, easy. “The patch just wasn’t working for me anymore, y’know?”

Elaine doesn’t manage to keep her soft _Bull_ entirely to herself, but Amelia’s too distracted by Bull’s face to notice. She looks back at the clothing she’d dropped, hesitating for long enough that Bull can feel the anger in the back of his brain again, knows how good it’d feel to fucking take whoever’s made a little girl scared of delaying her chores apart piece by piece — and then she hurries across the room and drops to her knees in front of him, and he shoves it back.

She’s still wide-eyed, but it’s less fearful now. Good kid. “Does it hurt?”

That’s what she leads with, nothing about what happened, or where the patch went. Bull huffs a laugh, swallowing it back when it thickens in his throat, cracking. “Nah, kid,” he gets out, and she nods, looking relieved.

“Good!” she says, and smiles up at him, and she runs back to the garment she dropped and picks it up, throwing it into what must be its correct pile. She hesitates then, looking between the clothes to sort and Bull, and Bull focuses on his breathing. Focuses on the sound of Elaine talking to the other kids. He’s fine. He’s got this.

“Siddown kid,” he tells her, and she smiles up at him and plops down on her bum next to her work, and he starts in on a story about the time a nug kept sneaking into their packs and gnawing the leather on Skinner’s daggers, and how Skinner’d come up with increasingly desperate ploys to kill the thing dead while Dalish made sure none of them ever worked.

It’s distracting. It’s good. Amelia looks happy, laughs a lot at the funny parts. The other kids seem to get into it too, and Elaine’s stopped giving him worried looks.

He’s fine.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAN this one was a doozy to write. thank you everyone for sticking with me while i try and beat up words and make this work. a huge thank you to my ever-wonderful beta fiveyearmission too, for giving me such incredibly good editing tips and stuff, just. she's so good, guys. so good!!

Matilda brings Dorian his breakfast — she'd introduced herself the first day and he's greeted her by name since as she didn't seem terrified of the concept — and withdraws. She'd stayed that first day, and Dorian had wondered if he'd got it wrong, telling her he'd leave his tray outside the door. She was used to it now, so he'd not fucked anything up too disastrously. Bull would be proud of him. Bull, who he hasn't seen since that wretched morning after the ball.

"Wait," he calls today, and she pauses inside the door, turning to him and inclining her head. "Have Bull sent to my rooms once he has finished his tasks for the morning."

She nods and leaves, and Dorian sighs before turning to his breakfast. Should he have had her request it of Marcus? He trusts they'll sort it out without too much issue: things seem to be efficiently run downstairs.

He's elbows deep in the accounts when he hears the knock at his door, followed promptly by the door's opening and Bull's heavy footfalls on the thick carpet. Dorian sets down his fountain pen and waits to feel warm hands on his shoulders, sliding down his chest — and when nothing comes he frowns and turns, resting an elbow on the back of his chair. "Are you going to stay there or —"

It's strange at first, simply disconcerting. Something off about Bull's face, nothing to immediately draw the attention — and it hits Dorian all at once, a surprise that it wasn't obvious, Bull’s missing patch, his wrapped hand.

"Bull...?"

Dorian pushes himself to his feet and Bull stays where he stands. His hands stretch and then curl at his sides. Dorian's mind whirls through the possibilities, the whys of it, but there’s too much — and all of it struggling beneath the heavy weight of the anger sparking through him.

"I'm okay," Bull says, as though that answers any of the questions on Dorian's tongue — but no, it does. Of course it does. Someone took Bull's eyepatch, exposing a part of him he does not share willingly, a part of him that is truly _his_ , and Bull says he's all right. Of course he does. And of course, Dorian does not believe him.

He reaches up, curving his hands around either side of Bull's jaw, and Bull closes his eye and leans his head forward. Dorian wants to _ask_ , opens his mouth to demand the culprit, who it is he will hunt down and make an example of, except... except when he came to Bull the other night, Bull let him do as he needed and did not press.

 _Fuck_ , Dorian thinks, and then, _I am not the man you are. I am not so considerate_.

"Amatus, come sit, please." He leads Bull to the bed and Bull does as he asks. It makes Dorian hesitate — Bull's willingness to be directed. His silence. Dorian must push past the rage in his gut, that his beloved is — _like this_.

Bull is rarely quiet: he is solemn when the occasion calls for it, sincere frequently, but not quiet. Dorian has to force himself to think past it, the fire flaming hot in the pit of his stomach. Who would _dare_ —

He kneels onto the bed next to Bull and touches his jaw, the back of his neck. Bull doesn't look at him, doesn't turn his head with the careful press of Dorian's fingers.

"Bull," Dorian whispers, and Bull does look at him then, and Dorian watches something tense and unhappy shudder across his face.

"Sorry, I'm," Bull starts, before cutting himself off. He drops his head forward between his shoulders, his chin bumping against Dorian's forearm. "I'm good. Didn't expect you to freak."

"Don't do this," Dorian says quietly.

Bull doesn’t pretend to misunderstand, doesn’t ask Dorian to clarify himself: they both know Bull has a specific set of coping mechanisms, and employs them with sincere dedication when necessary. But that shared knowledge does not mean Bull refrains from employing them, to Dorian's exasperation.

Or rather, this time, to his rapidly mounting anger.

The only slave who has any kind of power over Bull is Marcus, and Marcus wouldn’t seek to earn Dorian’s wrath — the man’s been strangely distant with him, but nothing that would culminate in this.

Which leaves Dorian’s mother.

Of course it does, of course she _would_ , not content with tugging Dorian’s strings and watching him dance. No, she would find what is still precious, anything that still _means_ something to Dorian and seek to stamp it out like a roach beneath the end of her staff.

“Dorian,” Bull says, his voice low, calm, rumbling up from the depths of his chest. It strikes him to the bone, abruptly shaken by the familiarity of that tone — and he shifts on the bed closer to Bull, pressing their heads together at the temple.

“Do _not_ be strong for me,” Dorian seethes — and forces himself to breathe in slowly. Bull doesn’t deserve that ire directed towards him. But Faustina... a true partner of his father for all they loathed each other, devoted to the preservation of their way of life in the face of all common decency. “She will regret this, I will see to it.”

“And then what?”

Dorian pulls back, the question taking him by surprise. Bull looks up at him, resignation on his face, and says it again:

“And then what? You kick your mom out of the house, maybe revoke the Pavus name, and she runs back to her family with her tail between her legs? We gonna pretend that’s what’ll happen?”

Dorian’s not an idiot, but Bull’s speaking to him as though he were one. He stands, stalking across the room to give himself distance, to allow himself time to act as opposed to _react_ , to not fall into a quarrel with Bull of all people. “Any power she would carry with her would be superficial at best,” he eventually manages, anger bleeding into the words; and when he glances back at Bull, the man lifts one shoulder in a shrug.

“So she’ll just fall off the map?”

Dorian starts to respond and… stops. Because of course she wouldn’t. House Thalrassian is only a lesser house because it is young; it breeds strong-willed and magicked stock, and for all of his mother’s gifts, she is hardly exemplary when compared to her brother Cassius, the current heir.

So deposed and with no remaining loyalties, Dorian has no doubt that together the two of them could quickly engineer the fall of House Pavus.

Dorian drags a hand across his face and hates himself, fiercely. “Bull.”

“We’re good,” Bull responds readily, and Dorian returns to him on the bed, standing before him and carefully, Maker, so carefully, touching his collarbones, his jaw. He cannot abide this, Bull’s easy acceptance of all of this… of all of Dorian’s shit piled upon shit, multiplied by Tevinter and.

“Bull,” he says again, and Bull presses into the hand cradling his left cheek.

Dorian shudders out a breath and brushes his fingertips against the scar tissue that took the place of Bull’s eye, the raised flesh, knotted and firm to the touch. He follows the deep lines stretching away from the epicenter of it, his fingers nearly fitting in each long-healed gash.

It was _months_ into their relationship before he saw Bull truly naked, stripped of the patch and tying leathers. Bull had tried to dismiss the significance of it, shrugged his shoulders, joked he’d had to make sure Dorian wouldn’t run for the hills when he saw the whole of his ugly mug.

Dorian had demanded Bull lay down on the bed, had _worshipped_ him as Bull so often did for Dorian — kissed him with less heat than reverence, studied every mark and how they fit in now, with the entirety of Bull’s face revealed. Bull had quickly abandoned his nonchalance, trembling under Dorian’s touch, sweet Andraste but Dorian remembers it, Bull open and shaking with the emotion of it.

Bull had fallen asleep like that, a great brute of a man bred for violence and strategy, vulnerable and beloved under Dorian’s tender hands.

It’s not the same, now. There’s little vulnerability in Bull, not at the surface, but Dorian’s intent on ensuring he knows it’s… _available_ to him. That he may choose it, if he wishes.

But Bull holds himself taut, now.

Dorian kisses the scar stretching across Bull’s face.

“I am… I am sorry, amatus, for my future inaction.” The words hook behind Dorian’s ribs, even as he says them, digging deep into his flesh and bone.

Bull breathes out slowly — takes his time replying. There’s a miserable strength to his expression that Dorian wants to… to soothe, to pick apart, but what could he offer beyond this?

Bull’s lips turn up into a humorless smile and he closes his eye. “I know,” he says.

Dorian feels as though he could scream. He won’t do this, he will _not_ stand idly by, the politics of the situation be damned. This may be his mother’s estate but he holds the power now.  “I cannot allow her to use you like this,” he snarls.

“You will, kadan,” Bull tells him, the kindness in his voice not reflected on his face, and Dorian cannot stay idle — he vaults from the bed and stalks across the room, his hands fisting at his sides. The room feels damnably small, oppressive with its opulence, and Dorian has a sudden urge to set it all aflame, to spew fire from his fucking mouth. There’s a bottle of wine on his desk and he grabs it in-hand, chucking it against the far wall. It shatters and paints the white wall red, and Dorian feels no better for it.

He drags a hand across his face. “I’m a fucking _magister_ , I will not have her dictate my life.” He heaves a long breath and… and feels like a child, throwing a tantrum because the source of his anger is beyond him, because it’s too damn directionless now.

He looks back at Bull, at the scar knotting Bull’s socket, at Bull’s carefully reserved expression, and Dorian feels shame turn his gut, as well. He is affected by the machinations of Tevinter, but there is plain evidence before him that Bull will suffer the consequences. And Bull will accept it, and stand strong, because that is who Bull insists he be.

“You…” Dorian starts, and drops his head, breathes out again. He walks to the side of the bed and looks down at Bull — feels gross discomfort looking down at him like that, and sinks to his knees. Bull shifts to catch his gaze, and this feels better, this feels right. Every backstabbing liar in this country may try to take Dorian’s power from him, may use that which he holds dear against him, but this he freely gives. “You will suffer for my misbehavior, and I don’t… I can’t abide it.”

The silence stretches between them. Dorian lays a hand palm-up on the mattress and feels ill down to his bones until Bull finally takes it.

“When’s your first session with the magisterium?” Bull eventually asks, and it pains Dorian that the question is about him, yet again. Always about him. He will find some way to make this right. Somehow. Bull squeezes his hand, and Dorian looks up at him.

“I don’t know.” He’ll need to speak with Maevaris about it, and his mother about the family lodgings in Minrathous. “But that will come — for now, one of Alexius’s compatriots, Magister Tarquin, is lodging with the Corduses. That’s where my focus will lie in the coming days.”

“Good,” Bull replies readily, and he lifts Dorian’s hand to his lips, kissing his knuckles. “That’s what you’re here to do. Figure ‘em out and take ‘em down.”

Dorian tugs his hand gently from Bull’s grip and slides his palm to cup his cheek, drag his thumb under his scarred socket again. “Be careful, amatus.” And then, because Dorian knows Bull, and is so damnably _afraid_ , “For my sake, if not your own.”

 

==

 

House Cordus resides in a villa outside of Qarinus on the opposite side of the city from the Pavus estate, but still conveniently close for an amicable lunch between two magisters. If the man has any concerns about Dorian’s intentions for meeting with him, the broad smile he greets Dorian with belies them.

“Your father was a good man,” Tarquin tells Dorian as they walk together through the villa’s extensive gardens, and Dorian smiles disingenuously in response. His father was a powerful man, and well-considered. If Dorian mourns his passing, it’s only because of the situation he now finds himself in because of it.

“I’ve much to accomplish if I wish to be even a reflection of him,” Dorian says, the words not technically a lie. He stops, ostensibly to take in the lemon trees, though really he simply wishes to consider his next words without the trouble of keeping a smile on his face. “I have benefited both from his guidance and from that of my tutors and mentors over the years.”

“Of course. As do we all.” Tarquin stands several steps behind him, and Dorian listens to the sound of his sandals on the pebble walkway — he’s shifting between his feet. The mark of a poor politician, such an obvious tell. Good.

“You knew my mentor, Gereon Alexius, if I recall correctly. Did you not?”

“Gereon and I worked together on many a proposal during our shared time in the Magisterium,” Tarquin says easily. “We often found our views in alignment, and it made sense to combine our clout to see things passed.”

Dorian wonders if Tarquin considers him an idiot. “I’ve wondered recently what views you found to be in alignment.”

Tarquin chuckles. “Ah, do you have an ulterior motive in meeting with me this afternoon, Magister Pavus? I had wondered, given how many magisters must be scattered about Qarinus at this moment. What is it that drew you to me?”

Dorian loathes him, loathes _this_. They will dance about each other, saying the opposite of what they mean for appearance’s sake, and hope they glean what they wish to. He has spent ten years telling people what he means in so many words, and he misses it with a sudden ferocity. “It seems as though you know exactly what it is I’m interested in, Magister Tarquin.”

Tarquin hums and stays silent. He wouldn’t incriminate himself by volunteering the topic, and so Dorian does it for him, uninterested in playing this game any longer. “Alexius provided me with several ideas of who may have shared his views on Tevinter, and on his beloved Elder God. I thought it was important I reach out to several of his old friends and find out how they’ve adjusted to the loss of such an ally.” Dorian turns to face him, and Tarquin smiles at him blandly, as though they’re discussing the weather.

“It’s my understanding that your Inquisition took care of the Venatori many years ago, did they not?”

“And Magister Tilani has made strides to do so in Tevinter.”

Tarquin’s expression does twist, minutely but noticeable, when Dorian brings up Mae. She tends to inspire that reaction in the more conservative circles. With her efforts against the Venatori, Dorian can only imagine their opinion of her now. “Magister Tilani has made… her waves, as she is wont to do. Many good men and women have been caught in her overreaching arms.”

Dorian scoffs. “Many Venatori, you mean.”

“I was unaware of such mutual exclusion. Would you have it that someone who wishes the best for Tevinter be slandered in such a way?”

The best for Tevinter... Dorian would be unsurprised at the man's narrow vision were it not such a prevalently-held belief. “You seem to me a sympathizer, Magister Tarquin.”

Tarquin scoffs at him. “You have misunderstood my rationality as sympathy. I am a magister and a businessman, and it is in my best interest for Tevinter to prosper.”

Dorian folds his arms behind his back and digs his nails into his palms, a focus point to distract from the anger he feels at the man’s so-called rationality.

“You strike me as well-intentioned but genuinely naive, Magister Pavus,” Tarquin continues. He doesn’t look at Dorian when he speaks, staring off towards the garden’s trees. He’s no longer fidgeting; he feels he has the upper hand.

Dorian could take him apart piece by piece.

“The Tevinter Imperium of the past was unsustainable,” Dorian says firmly. “Anyone with a differing take on the subject is fooling themselves, or simply believing what is fed to them from the lips and quills of Tevinter historians and bards. And many would have us continue in our ancestors’ footsteps and become unsustainable once again. Tevinter will rot from the inside out, and if we stand idle we’re complicit in her fall.”

“So you’re a revolutionary.” Tarquin arches both eyebrows.

“I’m a patriot.”

Tarquin lets out a laugh that startles the birds nesting in the nearest tree. “And how will you save her, Pavus? What damage will you do in the process? Once you’ve removed those of us who wish to see Tevinter restored, will she be enough for you?”

Dorian shakes his head, letting out a long sigh. He regrets coming here today. He should’ve stayed at the estate, should have found some excuse to steal Bull away. “Your demeanor discredits you, Magister Tarquin.”

“And you are a hopeful bore. What would you have Tevinter become? You were such a troublesome child, hateful of what you were given. And now you have taken it upon yourself to dictate what we should be."

"Do you intend to insult me?"

"There's no need. You insult yourself with this display. Will you do the same at the Magisterium? Parrot your idealisms on the floor? Shouldn't you be here to restore the glory you have robbed from those undeserving of your malice? Instead you would make yourself and your House an even greater laughingstock."

Dorian smiles at Tarquin, who smiles in return. Dorian smooths his fingertips over the grooves his nails have marked in his palms, and inclines his head to Tarquin.

"You must visit when you come to Minrathous," Tarquin says when they begin to walk together to the front of the villa. "My eldest loves to read of the Inquisition's exploits. He would be beyond himself were he to meet you; and I trust you would behave yourself around him. He's just a child, after all."

Dorian feels as though he has been struck. The smile stays on his face, and he grips Tarquin's hand firmly when he leaves.

 

==

 

He does not head directly back to the estate. He climbs into his carriage and rattles out a name without thinking, and continues to not think when he alights from the carriage and climbs up the steps of a modest home in a modest part of the city, all very respectable, clean, wealthy but unassuming.

He has not a thought in his head when he sits in the parlor, his mind not so much blank as a sandstorm, loud in his ears. Fucking loud.

"I'd not expected you to come calling. You've surprised me, Dorian."

Dorian doesn’t startle. Pushes himself to his feet and turns to meet her — and she looks lovely, stately in cream and blue, rounder than he remembers her being... but then she's borne children, his mother said as much. She did as she was expected.

Livia is as beautiful as he remembers, expression strict, wide brown eyes belying the sharpness of her tongue. She's married well, though not as prestigiously as her initial prospect. Her husband Justin is a merchant, an honest man by all accounts, and while Dorian doesn't assume she is happy he wonders if she would consider herself content.

He doesn't move towards her, wrapping his hand around the back of the chair he'd been shown to. "You did not imagine I would seek you out, even to say hello?"

She arches an eyebrow at him, and clasps her hands in front of her. "Don't be absurd. I thought upon the idea and dismissed it readily. We were never friends."

"A shame," Dorian says, and means it.

She cocks her head to the side, and looks him over. He can't begin to imagine what she sees when she looks at him. He thought rarely of her, when he was younger — out of self-preservation, mostly. When he did, he struggled to separate the desperation and anger he felt about the entire situation from her, and she didn't deserve his fruitless wrath. And so he considered her only when necessary, and dismissed her from his thoughts otherwise.

He rarely contemplated what she must have thought about the situation _she_ found herself in.

She purses her lips. "Why have you come here, Dorian?"

"I wished to see how you fare."

"You could have asked your mother that."

"She told me of you, of course. But she also hung your life and family over my head as though it were a dangling axe, and I thought I'd see for myself."

Livia laughs, her voice soft and surprisingly warm. She looks away from him, her eyes drifting over the walls of the drawing room until she pauses to gaze through the windows overlooking the modest gardens and gate of her home. "Do you imagine we could be friends now?"

"I think you're one of the few people in Tevinter who would not pretend to find me agreeable and then stab me between the ribs once I had turned my back," Dorian replies, and tightens his grip on the chair. There is a note of distress in his voice, and he knows by the way her smile deepens that she heard it. But what he said is true: he trusts her to be honest, and for any ill will she harbors to be straightforward.

"If I deem that a compliment, it's the first you've paid me. What a wretched husband you would have been."

She turns from him, and he wonders again what he'd thought to accomplish here — if he had simply been looking for a familiar face, someone who would hate him but honestly. Who would not insult him any more than he deserved. But then she hesitates in the doorway, and looks back at him. "If you've no pressing appointments," she says, and he sees the kindness there again, so alien to him but genuine, "then you may accompany me to relieve Mirabella of her duties for the afternoon. If Faustina sees fit to lord my progeny over you, then you should enjoy their company for several hours, as to see what you're not missing."

Dorian barks out a laugh, the force of it taking him by surprise — and how did he forget that biting humor, so commonly turned towards himself. It's infinitely more enjoyable when directed elsewhere. And while he does not have the love for children that Bull does, he would not be so rude as to brush aside Livia's invitation when he himself barged into her home uninvited.

 

==

 

"I mistreated you quite terribly, I think," Dorian says after some time, the two of them sat on the modest home’s modest rear porch, watching Livia’s brats run about the yard.

Livia is silent for a long moment, in which Dorian feels the weight of the years he left her alone and unwanted in Qarinus. She never deserved his ire.

"Did you find what you wanted?" she asks him, finally, and he looks at her while she watches her children play. "Are you content with your decision?"

It's a weighty question she asks. There is much to consider: the dissolution of their betrothal; the betrayal his parents believed was their only recourse; his leaving Tevinter with only a vague idea of when he would return. His meeting Mahnen and joining the Inquisition. His falling in with Bull and eventually with the Chargers as well, and what he found there — what Bull gave freely to him, with no strings attached.

"Yes. I did what I needed to do," he replies, and she nods.

She smiles, understated, and without looking away from her children says, "I hated you for many years for what you did. I was a punchline. No one would say anything outright, but I would be asked if I knew whose son you were entertaining most recently. It was a respite when you fell arse-deep into the brothels, because at least no one would admit to knowing you were there and incriminating themselves."

“Maker, Livia,” Dorian starts, not for the reprimand in her words but for the tableau she describes, the situation she found herself in, the situation Dorian never considered — out of self-preservation, yes, but is that any excuse.

She looks at him out of the corner of her eye; the disdain he expects is nowhere to be found on her face, and it unsettles him. He may have decided he came to speak with someone he knew would be sincere with him, yes, but he also came expecting some level hostility. “When you disappeared into your family’s estate, I was relieved there would be some end to it. When you remained there, I began to worry. When you fled with Alexius and finally out of Tevinter, I realized that to some extent it was the best outcome for the both of us. I would not have abided your behavior, and the both of us would resent each other for who we are.”

“You’ve thought about this for many years, and I’ve rarely thought upon you,” Dorian says, a confession once it’s past his lips, and Livia laughs softly.

“I made several dolls of you and inflicted increasingly barbaric punishments on them, truth be told.”

It surprises Dorian into a laugh, one that shakes his whole form, and he’s smiling when he asks, “The Rivaini superstition? You didn’t.”

“I did,” Livia says, and a grin stretches across her face, wickedly sharp. “You seem not to have lost any of your hair. Nor your limbs.”

Dorian leans back on his hands and tips his head back, the sunshine warm and bright on his face. “A disappointment, I’m sure.”

“Oh, there were _worse_ —” Livia cuts herself off when Mirabella, the children’s nurse, returns from the house to stand next to them. “Oh, Mira, it’s Friday, isn’t it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mirabella replies, and squats down easily, her skirts billowing about her. “But I’ll be in tomorrow…”

“No, no, it’s fine.” Livia reaches into a fold of her dress and pulls out a gaudy sequined purse — oh he’d mock her for that later — and removes from it several coins to pass to the woman. “Though I do still need you tomorrow.”

Mirabella chuckles and nods, pocketing the coin and pushing herself up to stand. “I’ll be here, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Mira,” Livia says easily, and Mirabella disappears back into the house.

Dorian is not a stupid man. He is often a fool, but not stupid — and yet it takes him too long to overcome the surprise heavy on his tongue, to ask like a true idiot: “Your children’s nurse isn’t a slave?”

Livia’s brow furrows as she looks at him, and with pursed lips she says, “Justin was reared by her mother, and he and Mira grew up together. He freed them both as soon as he was able. We don’t keep slaves.” She says it without judgment or pride, somehow, as though it’s simply the reality in which she lives and there is nothing shocking about it.

“You don’t maintain this house by yourself,” Dorian says, and manages to keep himself from cringing. Oh, he is an idiot.

“Of course not.” She rolls her eyes at him and folds her hands in her lap. “But we’ve worked to ensure we’re able to pay someone else to do it — I’ve never scrubbed a sink in my life and I’ve no plan to start now. Let someone else do it, Maker willing, but we will pay them for it.”

Dorian breathes out slowly, a long sigh. Thinks about Bull asking him if he would free their slaves, and of Bull’s bared scar and blistering hand. Feels more shame than he had speaking with Tarquin. “You’re a revolutionary.”

“I just don’t want to clean up shit,” Livia replies, and Dorian’s startled into laughter. Despairing, a hint hysterical, but laughter nonetheless.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this has been delayed due to my for some reason writing over 18K for my minibang ( _why_ ), and also because I fell into the writing pit that is a lot of different projects all at once. Why this, me.
> 
> HUGE thanks to [fiveyearmission](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyearmission) and [paperiuni](http://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni) for their work betaing this sucker. I so appreciate it. ♥

Bull spends a lot of time with the kids going forward. Elaine talks to Marcus to get permission, and Marcus moans about it but agrees. Bull wonders if he feels guilty, or if it's just not worth it to protest. Bull would've gone through with it anyway.

Dorian finds him a book of stories — Dorian's careful around him now, brittle with anger and worry, and Bull does his damnedest to act normal around him, to get Dorian's attention back to where it needs to be — and Bull reads to the kids, sometimes letting Amelia clamber into his lap and follow along with the words.

She can read some, small words, the most common ones, and he helps her sound them out when she stumbles. The other kids get jealous so Bull lets each of 'em have a turn, ends up covered in kids some days, Elaine laughing at him kindly.

Amelia calls him out one day, her hands mapping his left hand, touching his shortened fingers with the kind of curiosity only a kid has. Her hands slip at some point, her fingers jabbing against his bandaged palm, and she jumps when he can't keep the hiss in.

"Does it hurt?"

"Not really," Bull tells her, and she nods and goes back to begging him to tell her more about Andraste’s dog.

He shouldn't have brushed off how easily she dropped it, though. It's late that night that Elaine hunts him down in the gardens, where he's moving the piles of cuttings left by the gardeners after their own work that afternoon.

She walks up to him, rocking on the balls of her feet until he drops his current load — and then she launches herself at him. She grabs his left hand and unwraps the makeshift bandage with quick fingers. "Maker's breath, Bull."

To be fair to her, it looks pretty bad — keeping the blisters clean hasn't been as easy as he'd thought it would be, and to make sure he gets all his work done he's had to ignore when it hurt, do what needed done in spite of it.

She doesn't touch the reddened oozing mess, but she holds his hand in hers and makes soft noises. "What if Amelia hadn't told me?" she scolds him, and he huffs a laugh when he thinks of how he made sure Amelia knew to tell Elaine when anything was wrong. Concerned little pipsqueak.

"We're going to the Healer. This isn't — you should have said something earlier."

"No point in debating choices made in the past," Bull replies, and she glares at him and doesn't let up until he agrees to go with her.

 

==

 

The waiting room of the Healer's clinic is full of people — slaves, _other_ slaves, none of them here for sniffles and booboos — so him and Elaine find an empty spot against the wall. Elaine sits down and keeps quiet, and Bull leans, his back against the wall, and looks over everybody there: a couple women, pretty, no obvious health issues so they're likely pregnant, or worried they are, here to take care of it either way. There's a man with a swollen face, his nose broken, looks like he got the shit beat outta him. He has bruises on his arms from blocking and his knuckles are torn up and bloody, so he fought back. Not dead, so it had to have been another slave, or somebody equally unimportant. Whoever it is isn’t here though. Maybe the other guy's the one who's dead.

People cycle in and out through the door leading to the exam room, then in and out from the street. When they'd brought Lizbeth here before they must've caught the Healer on an abnormally slow day, if this is what's typical. Maybe because it's night, it's easier to sneak out and get yourself taken care of.

They wait about an hour, by which point Bull's figured out which slaves come from the same place or know each other: they work to avoid each other's eyes, especially the women’s, or they give each other strained smiles, bitter and understanding.

Elaine falls asleep on the ground next to him, her head against his knee. Eventually the Healer parts the curtain and nods at Bull, his face twisted up with tired disappointment.

Elaine jerks awake when Bull nudges her. "We're up, kiddo."

She takes the hand he offers and he pulls her up to her feet. They walk into the back room where the Healer's wiping off his exam table with a rag, sluicing bloody water into a trough on the floor at the end of the table. His eyes narrow when he glances up at them, looking from Elaine to Bull. "What is it?"

Elaine places a hand on Bull's back and pushes, and Bull lets her move him forward a little bit. The Healer lets out a heavy sigh when Bull unwraps his hand and shows it to him — like he’s just as underwhelmed by the injury as Bull is. Elaine's standing expectantly at Bull's side though, and the Healer glances at her before pursing his lips and motioning at Bull to take a seat on the exam table.

Bull rubs his good hand over the surface first, making sure it's dry after the blood; and then he hops up, ignoring the familiar twinge in his bum knee.

"You shouldn't have broken the blisters," the Healer tells him, and holds out a hand. Bull looks down at the man’s palm, then back up at him.

"You gonna put anything on it? Or are you just gonna wave your hands at it?"

"Magic is a tool as much as any salve." The Healer frowns, the heavy lines of his face suited to the expression, and he bounces his hand like that'll make Bull do what he says. "It's unwise to judge magic without considering its wielder."

Bull opens his mouth, all geared up to tell this fucking Ander that he doesn't know the wielder from Koslun, when Elaine clears her throat and says, her voice quiet but firm (the tone she uses with the _kids_ , for fuck's sake), "Let him see to your hand, Bull."

The Healer huffs like Bull’s bruised his ego when Bull finally does so, dropping his hand palm-up into the man's grip because Elaine asked him to. It's not worth it anyway, to turn it into a big deal: it's Tevinter. He's gonna get harassed by fucking mages — and not even the ones he _likes_ — no matter what he does, for good or ill.

The last time he’d had a mage lay their hands on him it was Dalish, muttering under her breath about how he was too old to use his lardy self as a battering ram. He’d laughed it off and endured the weird tingling of her magic moving across his skin. The time before that he’d ignored a fucking dagger wound in his thigh that’d eventually gone off, red and purple and puss-filled like he’d gone undead. Stitches had left him to the tender mercies of a snappish Dorian, who’d not bothered to give Bull the time to prepare himself for how much it’d burn.

Healing magic only really hurts when you've let the injury go to shit: normally you get it done to you when the wound's still fresh, too dangerous to leave to herbs and poultices; but once infection's had time to set in, it's gotta be burned away. Your body normally does it on its own at a slower rate — Bull's had enough long scabs to notice when the half-inch on either side's got its own temperature. But healing magic's gotta speed it up, and Bull's hand is far enough along that he sucks the inside of his cheek between his teeth to distract himself from the pain coursing through his veins. Bad enough he's got a strange mage poking around his person. He’d at least prefer Dorian’s vindictive concern.

"Almost there," Elaine says at his side, and he looks down at the Healer's work, watching the skin of his palm glow as it knits itself back together. "You're doing great."

Bull laughs, flexing his fingers straight — the Healer _tsks_ under his breath — and tilts his head toward her. "First time in a long while I've gotten the special treatment for a flesh wound."

She looks half-ready to berate him, but the Healer cuts her off. "The skin will be thin for several days, until your body can catch up with what I was able to reconstruct."  He releases Bull's hand from his grasp and disappears into the back room.

Bull looks at Elaine, but she doesn't seem surprised by the behavior — maybe that's what the Healer does. Judges you for your injury, sets you straight, and then fucks off.

"You should come by," Elaine calls to the Healer, who Bull can hear puttering around behind the curtain. It sounds like he's going through jars of something, moving boxes between stacks maybe. He doesn't reply to Elaine, but she seems unperturbed by it. "The elfroot's coming in nicely."

"I've no interest in young stalks right now," the Healer says when he returns, a jar in his hands. Bull takes it from him and pops off the lid, taking a whiff of the cream inside — smells nice, embrium probably — and listens carefully. Elaine's never expressed an interest in gardening before, he would have noticed.

"We've picked up an imported strain," Elaine replies, and she looks at Bull when she says it, her eyes widening. He parses through it and shit, that's simple: imported elfroot, young stalks. Doubtful anybody outside of this room would figure it for more than it appeared.

"Too much work." The Healer plucks the jar from Bull's hand. "Do not ingest this, and keep your hand wrapped for several days. I've no interest in a magister's demanding my head for destroying property." He gives the jar back and Bull manages not to roll his eye.

"Too much work?" Bull asks, and he slathers his palm up with the stuff before pocketing the jar. "What do you go for then? If young elfroot's not worth the trouble."

The Healer doesn't glare at him so much as look up at him like Bull's a bit of shit he narrowly avoided on the street.

"I can be of little help to anyone if one collection spoils the stores. Some crops are more reliable, easier to harvest. Others are more obviously overlooked."

Elaine's angry though, Bull can see it in the tightening of her fists at her sides, the way her jaw tenses. "You always take the prophet's laurel though on my recommendation — or the crystal grace. Elfroot's equally important." He can't parse what’s what beyond the elfroot. Orlesians maybe?

"And I would have taken the felandaris as well," the Healer says, glancing up at her. She breathes in sharply and Bull wonders for a brief moment, watching the way she rocks forward onto the balls of her feet, if she's going to lash out at the man. She's got a look on her face that says she'd go through with it.

The room's silent, everybody tense, so for lack of anything better to do Bull uncaps the jar and rubs some more cream into his hand. Can’t hurt, right? His skin starts going tingly, and he wipes his good hand across his trousers until the feeling's gone. He heaves a huge sigh and repockets the jar. "So you don't get much deep mushroom, right? That'd be dwarves? Not great for trade if vints pissed them off too."

Elaine starts next to him and the Healer looks at him sharply, smiles wide and fast enough that it shows his teeth — the guy's freaky as shit, just another confirmation — and disappears again into the back room.

"I didn't expect you to get it so quickly," Elaine tells him, voice quiet enough Bull has to be careful to hear her.

"What's 'felandaris'?" he says, and she shakes her head, her mouth stretching into a thin line. Personal, then. So... woman? Elf?

"Pregnant," the Healer says when he stalks back into the exam room. Bull stares at him, has to walk through that: personal. Woman. Elf. Pregnant. His mouth is dry when he looks back to Elaine, who's got a scowl on her face like she could take the Healer apart given enough time.

Shit, and the blood on the exam table, the anxious women in the waiting room. Of course the Healer helps with that kind of thing, that's no surprise. But Elaine's a kid. She's a kid who's never so much looked at anybody like she's interested in them, as far as Bull's noticed, which means whoever it was is gone now, or she was never into them in the first place.

And the fucking Healer just airs that dirty laundry like it's anybody's business but hers.

"Master Pavus is uninterested," she says, and Bull doesn't let himself think about that, focuses on her alone — he's certain she's gonna leave, turn and go, but she stays where she stands. "Is Bull going to be all right?"

"His hand should heal without issue." The Healer looks them both over and shakes his head, and returns to the clinic's back room. What an asshole.

"We should get back," Elaine says. Bull runs through each of the questions he wants to ask her — who, and when, and can he find the fucker and make him shit himself — and catalogs each of ‘em to never ask her. Not without her permission. Not without her bringing it up herself. Not when her entire fucking life is an exercise in not being able to tell somebody no.

 

==

 

She tells him, in her own time.

Bull's had his hands full with his duties and with Elaine mother-henning him, so he does what he can to see what he can figure out, without pushing anybody too hard — but there's only so much info he can glean from the rest of the staff. Ever since Pavus took his eyepatch they've treated him like a fucking plague carrier. Elaine gets mad enough for him though, tears into the assembled slaves in the middle of breakfast one morning when someone tells Bull his face is putting them off their food.

She's a good kid, reminds him of his boys. Bull's lucky she's taken a shine to him.

He follows her to the children’s room midday on a Friday and she stops outside the door, taking a step back and looking up at him, her brow furrowed, her lips pursed. "I want you to know, before you find out from anyone else."

He could tell her he doesn't need to know, but that's not for him to say. If she needs to tell him, shit, if she _wants_ to, then he'll be an ear to listen.

"When I was bought by House Pavus I was taken under the wing of one of the others, a woman named Henrietta. She was... she was a lovely woman, comforted me when I was scared. She was kind." Elaine glances down the hallway as though she's heard someone, or simply wants to ensure they're alone save the children behind the door. "She _is_ kind," she corrects herself, and there's a resolve to her expression, like it's something she's told herself over and again. "I was older when I understood that she and Master Halward... and older yet when Etta asked me to accompany her to see the Healer. He's... he's not a kind man, but he's good."

Bull thinks of the disdain on the Healer's face when Elaine argued with him, and isn't so sure. It's not hard to be a good man in Tevinter, when you look at what the baseline is — bastards who fuck their slaves and leave them to deal with the consequences.

She clenches her hands into fists at her sides. "She couldn't go through with… so eventually. She wanted to leave. And they'd talked about it. We knew he had a way to help people run south. So I helped her to the Healer's clinic one evening and we staged it, like there was an accident, that she died on the table. I came back splattered with sow's blood and crying, because my best friend was gone. And it worked. Etta's in Nevarra, with her... they must be almost four years old, her child." She smiles, a distant look in her eyes before she ducks her head.

"And so Pavus picked you to fill her shoes?" He can't keep the vitriol from his voice — she's still a fucking _kid_ , and Pavus owned her like chattel. She looks up at him, must notice his expression because she wraps a hand around his arm at the elbow.

"I know Master Dorian hasn't had the best of relationships with his family, and it's not my place to assume what he's told you, but Halward was... kind, in his own way. He was a caring man."

"But not good," Bull says, and she frowns at him but doesn't correct him either.

He'll tear this fucking country down brick by magic-sculpted brick.

He forces himself past the thought, past the anger curling his hands into fists at his sides, and thinks instead of what connects her and Henrietta and the Healer’s strange brand of sympathy. "So the Healer offered to get you out too, and you didn't take him up on it."

She nods but doesn't elaborate. There are reasons — loyalties, screwed up as they would be, or fear, of being caught or of going out on her own at all. He hasn't asked but he guesses she was born into this; maybe she'd have more of a drive to escape if she had something to compare her life to, or like Gatt had, a clear path forward.

"You came north with Master Dorian," she says after a while, and Bull heaves out a sigh. He doesn't know where to start, to explain how the situation's different, starting at how he's old enough to own his own bad decisions.

He settles on nodding, arching a brow. "Yeah, I did."

She drops her hand from his elbow to his wrist, walks her fingers over the bandage wrapped around Bull's palm. "I don't understand _that_... except you care about him."

"This place is a shithole," Bull replies, thinking about Dorian’s strained smile, his wavering resolve — and Elaine's startled into a laugh.

 

==

 

Bull goes back to shuffling through the motions: does his duty and keeps his head down — still gets his time with the kids, like Marcus figures he’s earned it, the asshole — and when it’s late at night he lays on his bedroll and… aches. Tries to think past the want, the need to reach for Dorian. To ground himself in the tilt of his smile, or even in the desperate energy he’s been running on since his appointment.

It’s not good, what Dorian’s putting himself through. And if Bull had a chance to make him forget, to distract him for a while…

Bull tries to get to him, but the first night Dorian’s out, and Bull has no way of knowing when he’ll be back, and an early morning to wake up for. The second and third, Dorian’s charming the upper crust, vapid smile on his face when Bull grabs a tray of raw minced beef on bite-sized slices of bread from the kitchens and delivers it to Lizbeth, who’s doing a bang-up job of not looking like she wants to murder anyone she’s offering food to.

The fourth night, Bull wakes up after only a handful of winks of sleep. His heart’s racing, blood pumping loud in his ears, but he doesn’t remember the dream; just remembers pain, and the overwhelming feeling that he knew exactly when he was gonna die.

He sits and breathes for what’s gotta be an hour. Concentrates on the rip down the middle of his thin blanket, a casualty of dreams from a couple days ago.

It’s late, and there’s no light spilling out into the hallway from underneath the door to Dorian’s bedroom. Bull knocks anyway and waits, listens for the whisper of slippers against the floor.

He knocks again, and hears nothing.

He should go back to bed. Lie down and breathe, stare at the ceiling and focus on everybody else’s breathing, match his to theirs.

He tries the door handle instead, and lets himself into the room. His hands curl into fists, like he’s ready for an attack — like his body thinks he’s trespassing — and he forces himself to relax. Works through each set of muscles starting with his neck down to his calves.

Dorian jerks awake when Bull settles on the edge of the bed, hand going to his eyes, mouth dropping open into a jaw-cracking yawn. “What — Maker, Bull, what time is it?” It’s familiar, so familiar, like they’re in a shitty inn in some backwater part of the Free Marches and Dorian’s been catching up on his beauty rest while Bull finishes things up with the boys.

Dorian slides his hand over his hair, pushing it out of his face, and he smiles up at Bull like he’s remembering the same thing. And then he frowns. “Why are you here?” He drops his hand to the bed and pushes himself up, letting out another yawn. “Not that I’m unhappy to see you. But it’s — fasta vass, Bull, it must be halfway till dawn.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Bull explains, and Dorian’s expression softens.

Dorian lays his hand palm-up on the mattress, and Bull takes it, only remembering the bandage still wrapped around his healing skin once he has.

Dorian stares at the bandage and Bull watches emotions flicker across his face, watches his lips purse. Watches him fight with himself over whether or not he’s going to say anything — or if he’ll accept this as another thing that’s happened that he doesn’t know how to address.

“Are you all right?” Dorian asks finally, his voice quiet in the dark expanse of his bedroom. Bull lifts Dorian’s hand and kisses his knuckles, and Dorian lets out a loose, tired laugh. “Is that my answer, amatus?”

He raises his knuckles against Bull’s lips, and pats the mattress with his other hand. “Lie down with me, then.”

So Bull does, settling across the broad bed and gathering Dorian up in his arms when Dorian shifts closer, grateful for the weight of him.

“Will you tell me what’s kept you up?” Dorian asks, mouth warm against Bull’s clavicle, and Bull hums, and sleeps.

 

==

 

In the early morning, the sun just cresting the hills to the east, Dorian unwinds the bandage from Bull’s hand and runs his fingers over the healed skin, checking to ensure it’s solid, whole.

Bull breathes in the calm of this moment, lets it fill him, and opens his mouth to ruin it:

"I've found something out," he starts, and has to steel his resolve when Dorian's tender expression twists into a careful skepticism. "Did you ever know a woman named Henrietta? One of your father's slaves."

Dorian begins to shake his head and then pauses, his hands still holding Bull’s. "I've come to understand that I know very little concerning my father's slaves."

"She was your father's mistress until a couple years ago," Bull says simply. Dorian looks unsurprised, but when his hands start shaking he has to let Bull’s go. He busies them with twisting the soiled bandage into a knot.

"I myself will take part in that long-standing tradition if pressed," he says, with a cynicism reflected nowhere in his form.

"Doubt we're gonna run into the same situation that gave Henrietta a way to get smuggled outta the country."

Dorian frowns, and before he can question him, Bull continues, "A couple years ago your father was told she died on an operating table, but she and her unborn kid were smuggled south. So she's living somewhere, likely Nevarra, with another heir to House Pavus."

Dorian’s knuckles go white as he coils the bandage tight. He looks fucking gobsmacked, like Bull's suggested Andraste was a nug, and he shifts on the bed like he wants to stand but keeps reconsidering every other second.

"You're... sure. Of this. That this is true."

Bull lifts a shoulder in a shrug. There’s a danger here, in making this into something it may never have the chance to be — a viable solution to the problem of House Pavus’s future. But he can’t discount it, either. "Pretty sure. Can't say anything for certain unless we manage to find her somehow, and that could be a needle in a haystack kind of situation. But I’m getting contacts here. Could reach out to Josephine too. There’s definitely potential."

Dorian opens and closes his mouth, and drops the bandage to the bed so he can drag a hand across his face and up into his hair. “It would be an incredible boon, were we to locate her.” Bull watches his expression slide through emotions — disbelief, hope, then a disappointed sort of resolve.

“But no child of a slave could be named heir.” He sighs, his shoulders curving forward, his chin lowering to his chest. “I would have thought you’d understand this better than I.”

Which is… which is true.

Bull lets it settle over him like he would the ash and smoke from a fire. Inevitable. Tevinter wouldn’t accept a bastard. The kid could be trained up at one of the colleges maybe, and Henrietta could be taken care of. But if anybody could be the heir of House fucking Pavus, would work in Faustina's and — fuck, and in _Dorian’s_ — grand scheme of things, then Dorian could just adopt some prodigy and wash his hands of it altogether.

“I’d like to meet them. If you… _do_ find them,” Dorian says, and Bull presses down against the flare of pointless fucking hope behind his sternum.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao so how about them trespasser spoilers. REALLY GLAD BULL AND DORIAN DIDN'T MAKE THE SAME POOR DECISIONS IN CANON THAT THEY DID IN THIS FIC.
> 
> anywhoosers, a HUGE thank you to fiveyearmission for the beta. you are the wind beneath my wings, darling.

It’s early morning when they’re set to strike out. Maevaris is inside, making nice with his mother in the way only a true politician could manage, and Dorian is taking advantage of the absence of people milling about that comes with the early hour. He grabs Bull by the wrist, leading him into the carriage.

Bull lets loose a rumbling laugh as he settles onto one of the seats. Dorian checks that the curtains are closed and kneels across Bull's lap, silently grateful for the absurd luxury of high roofs in carriages.

"You gonna miss me or something?" Bull asks, tone almost forced in its conviviality. Dorian could call him on it, could try and draw something more sincere from him — but Bull seems determined to act as though all is well. They could enjoy each others’ company for the next ten minutes, or Dorian could spend the time to make the both of them feel completely shitty.

Perhaps it's selfish of him, but he's opting for the former.

“It will only be several weeks.” He smooths his thumbs over Bull’s cheeks, resting them near his temples. It’s difficult not to focus only on Bull’s single eye, the one part of him that seems as unhappy as Bull must truly be, and instead take in the whole of his face at once. “We will wine and dine and surely expire of boredom, present Mae’s latest legislation against the Venatori, and then the session will break for a month.”

Bull’s lips turn up in what could be considered a smile were Dorian not learned in all of Bull’s expressions. “I’ll hold down the fort,” he replies, and Dorian does not doubt it that he will do his damnedest.

He presses his thumbs into Bull’s skin, angling his nails down just enough to sting, and snaps, “Set the fucking fort on fire for all I care, if you are not — as you are now when I return.” He’d almost said _safe_. What a terminally unfunny joke.

Bull’s eye narrows, naturally hearing what Dorian left unsaid, and he gently knocks his head up against both of Dorian’s hands. “ _You’re_ descending into the viper’s pit,” he starts, and Dorian bites down on his own bottom lip to keep from screaming.

He slides his hands down Bull’s face, hooking his thumbs under Bull’s chin so that he can jerk his head up where he wants it, so he can look straight into Bull’s eye when he hisses, his heart suddenly in his throat, “Do _not_ trivialize your situation, I won’t have it. _Promise me_. Promise me you will watch out for yourself while I’m gone. _Swear it_ , Bull, or so help me I’ll—”

Bull’s smile is the one he wears when a job’s gone south, strained and exhausted — when he wants to convey hope while ignoring his own dismal certainty. “Dorian.”

“Swear it.”

Bull turns his head enough to ghost a kiss over one of Dorian’s palms. “Neither of us are children. I could swear the moons were made of cheese, but—”

The anger, tight in Dorian’s stomach, boils up into his chest, out his arms, and up into the base of his skull, until he has to tighten his jaw to keep from letting it out. No wine bottles to throw here, and no point in letting it erupt in counterpoint to Bull’s stubborn resilience.

“ _Please_ , Bull,” Dorian whispers, teeth clenched, and Bull’s face collapses into a grimace before he exerts control over it again, forcing it back into his banal smile.

“I’ll be as you left me, kadan. I swear it,” he capitulates, and the hollow victory of it does little to quell the rage underneath Dorian’s skin.

==

When the knock comes on the carriage door, they’ve been sitting silently for some time, foreheads pressed together — and it’s only when Dorian opens his own eyes that he realizes Bull’s never closed.

“Dorian.” Mae’s voice sounds too close, as though she were speaking directly into Dorian’s ear, and he closes his eyes again.

“Dorian,” Bull says, voice soft, breath buffeting against Dorian’s skin. Dorian pulls back enough to shake his head. He glances towards the door.

He could write to the Inquisition. They could be extricated out of this thrice-damned country within the week. He could write to Sera, who would delight in the inroads she could make in Tevinter, in the havoc she could create for the _magey bastards_. He could write to Vivienne, or Varric. He could tell Krem quite sincerely that they were in over their heads, and that neither of them were smart enough to get out before they opened their mouths and inhaled water.

He could do that. He could do so many fucking things.

He brushes a thumb across Bull’s forehead, and then climbs off of his lap and exits the carriage. He stands to the side while Bull comes out after him, and feels numbly grateful that the slave accompanying Mae from the house — Ellie? Erin? — keeps her head down, doesn’t meet his eyes.

She does move towards Bull though, passing him something over-large for her small arms. When Bull turns to pass Dorian his ratty old saddle blanket, Dorian feels as though Bull has instead passed him a heavy weight, an anvil made of aurum he has no hope of carrying.

“Amatus,” he whispers, and Bull grins at him, an actual grin, and Dorian can’t help but respond with one in kind.

Bull wraps his great hands around both of Dorian’s as they grasp the blanket, and they stand there for what is definitely too long, until Mae lays her hand across Dorian’s shoulder.

Bull loads Dorian’s luggage into the compartment of his carriage and stands at attention until they exit the estate’s front gate. Dorian catches a final glimpse of him at the estate’s front steps as the carriage turns on the road, and he has to bite his tongue to keep from telling the driver to turn around. To stop, and let him out.

“I am too old,” he whispers, and Mae lifts her head from the book laid out across her lap. “I am too damn old to question so much of what I’ve chosen to do here.”

“Age has little to do with certainty,” she replies matter-of-factly, and turns to the next page of her book. From where Dorian sits, he can see the text is densely packed, with notes she’s made obscuring the margins on all sides. Mae has always had an opinion on what was presented to her. "Experience on the other hand... what does your experience tell you?"

Dorian lets loose a sigh that ends with a shaky laugh. "That's the real question."

His experience tells him that there is no change without a person taking a stand, rallying those who wish for change, gaining the power needed to use force when necessary. His experience tells him that if you simply _hope_ for something to improve, you may as well stick your head in a hole in the ground and imagine your better world in the darkness you will never see beyond.

His experience tells him that he has spent much of his life as someone who longed for things he had once thought impossible, and that he has been offered them by an infuriating man who has helped him to become someone he never expected himself to be, for good or for ill.

He has dragged that man into damnation and is now leaving him to the wolves.

"Do the ends justify the means?" Dorian asks, sitting back. He looks out the window at the houses blurring past them now — the estates have transitioned into the smaller homes of the Soporati, and the earlier smoothness of the roads has adjusted itself in kind.

"That would depend on the ends, and who they will benefit," Mae replies obliquely. Dorian thinks of Tevinter reborn, and of Bull's exposed scar.

==

The trip is as pleasant as it could be. Dorian's back and legs ache when they arrive in Minrathous at his father's... at _his_ lodgings in the Atrium Flores, a collection of suites and small guesthouses owned by magisters' families for generations. He has been to the Pavus rooms several times, when he was a child, and everything seems smaller now. The ceilings are lower, the walls closer, but this feeling of being smothered is less from the size and more due to the absurd extravagance.

The sitting room is where he'll have the opportunity to entertain anyone he feels would be open to his cause. It is dripping with silks and gold, riches enough to do a... a _shitload_ of good in a place like Crestwood or even Redcliffe. Here, they're intended only to impress, both as a tool for intimidation and as reassurance of the quality of the discourse.

His own bedroom and bath are much the same, and when he's looking over the artwork hanging on the bedroom wall he discovers a false panel that swings open on hinges, a door to a slaves’ hallway that he's sure his father utilized more for company than assistance.

The thought sits in the front of his mind and the back of his throat, and he thinks about Bull's ill-formed but well-intentioned plan. It would resolve much of the bullshit he’s expected to endure were there another Pavus heir: he could continue with his plans for Tevinter without concerning himself with his mother's plotting. He could see some sort of Maker-damned end in sight.

He breathes in suddenly, too shallowly, and closes the secret door with shaking hands.

He sits down on the edge of the bed his father once slept in and forces himself to walk through what he wishes for this forsaken country step-by-step. The Venatori eradicated. The corruption of the magisterium exposed and rooted out. After that...?

He thinks of Bull, and of Bull's little Amelia. Of Marcus, and of every man, woman, and child carried into Tevinter on Lucretia’s ship.

All of them, free.

"What would it take?" he says, voice thick in his throat, and drags a hand over his face. "What would it take, you fucking coward, to do something about _that_?"

The walls of the room seem simultaneously too close, stiflingly so, and miles away, a limitless expanse between himself and any boundary. He concentrates on breathing slowly — takes in air and holds it. Exhales. He wraps his hands around his thighs and focuses on the pressure.

It works, for a while; and then he stalks out of the rooms, down the hallway, and out into the street.

==

He ends up in a bar, all glass and gleaming metal: the nicest watering hole he's found himself in in years. Perhaps since he last left Minrathous. He rarely found the opportunity to experience the true luxuries of the south, even at Skyhold, and after a year he found he no longer wanted what little he had access to.

And the _people_... the people are something else. Dorian's dressed well enough, black and gold and blue, draped artfully about his frame in what Mae assured him was the latest style in the capital. His tattoos are on full display, black and red spiraling up his arms until they meet the more geometric shapes spanning his shoulder blades. Bull had designed those, had been delighted to, and Dorian remembers how... _possessed_ he had felt, after they'd been finished. Property of the Iron Bull, he'd joked, to see how Bull's eyes darkened.

But that's... Dorian draws himself out of the memory, navigating through the tall tables at which sit what must be the upper crust of Minrathous high society. Women and men in extravagant dress, dripping with jewelry and piercings, glance at him and immediately look away. For what feels like the first time since Dorian's arrival in Tevinter, absolutely no one here cares about him.

It's… surprisingly pleasant.

He orders whiskey and lots of it, swigging back several shots and wincing through the burn down the back of his throat. He's not eaten in several hours, and the liquor hits him square in the chest. Thank the Maker.

He lounges at the bar, switching to what the bartender tells him is their most Ferelden beer — oh, the look Dorian gets when he even _asks_ about the availability — and nursing one flagon after the next. It feels... not good, but relaxing. Warm. Were it not for the increasingly loud ruckus behind him, someone shouting something followed by a round of laughter, he thinks he could lose himself quite easily in the feeling.

When even the bartender looks up from polishing the glasses behind the bar to look at the group at the center of the noise, Dorian turns on his stool and takes in the sight. A table of five alti, carefully dressed in the way of the young and rich, all varying stages of drunk, are locked onto a young man, an elf, standing next to the table with his head bowed.

"You’ve got this one trained," one of the alti, a man, handsome dark face and wide grin, exclaims, raising his glass at the man. The _boy_ , Dorian realizes — he can't be over 17.

Dorian looks around, but no one else in the bar is paying the table any attention, except for the seldom glances thrown their way when they make too much noise. No one gives a rat's arse otherwise. The boy is a slave, and so no one gives a rat's arse.

Dorian can't see the boy when he drops to his knees and hands next to the table, but there's an outburst of laughter and someone slaps the alti who'd commanded him, his owner, he must be, on the back. "How'd you find one that’s so eager to debase itself?”

“Are your family’s slaves not agreeable?” the man replies airily, a sneer twisting his face. “It’s in their nature, to find gratitude in being so directed.”

Dorian’s off of his stool and halfway across the room before he thinks through the movement. He pauses next to their table, behind the boy’s owner, and he can see the boy now on his knees, his head bent between his shoulders. The toe of his owner’s boot is wet with spit.

Dorian clears his throat and the boy’s head jerks up, and even with the boy’s reserved expression Dorian sees the anger, the humiliation, the tired, quiet fear sunken deep into his bones. How the rest of them don’t see it is — he can’t begin to imagine. He was never so inobservant.

“May we help you?” the owner asks, lifting a brow and taking a sip of his liquor. He looks wholly underwhelmed with Dorian, and annoyed at the interruption.

Dorian clasps his hands behind his back, his nails digging into his palms. He would have these men dragged through the streets behind a score of horses.

Truly, a tragedy that he never fulfilled the family dream of rising to archon.

He smiles thinly at the owner, who is overdressed in his fineries and likely thinking Dorian looks a fool himself. “How much for this slave?”

The man arches one of his brows and glances between his compatriots, and then lets loose a laugh, long and loud. Dorian waits it out, relaxing his face into an expression of careful disinterest.

"Are you quite serious?"

Neither the man nor his friends are carrying staves. Dorian has no doubts he would be victorious if this were to end in violence — it’s rare that a young alti would have at any point focused heavily on hand-to-hand combat, or practical staff-less magic. "I ask because you are not leaving with him tonight, and of the possible avenues towards this inevitable conclusion, it would be in your best interest to accept payment."

The man's levity evaporates and he sits up straight in his chair, and then rises. Perhaps Dorian misjudged, by introducing a threat so early in their exchange; but at the same time, his hands flex behind his back and he shifts his legs, letting his weight fall onto the balls of his feet.

"I suggest you leave this fine establishment," the man snaps, and Dorian assumes it is only propriety that keeps him where he stands. Dorian misses the simplicity of tavern brawls in the south suddenly, with a ferocity that has him clenching his hands into fists at his sides.

There is no possibility of Dorian's leaving. If he were to do so, there's no telling what would befall the slave — though Dorian could let his imagination run rampant with the potential horrors. He will not have it. "I will leave when you are no longer in possession of this boy."

One of the man's friends mutters something about taking this outside, and Dorian keeps the grin off of his face when the man nods shortly. Good. They likely see a tired old man making an attempt at humor, or simple harassment. They will stumble out onto the street, itching for an easy fight, and Dorian will introduce each of them personally to the cobblestones.

He turns from the man and squats down beside the boy, offering him his hand. The boy stares at Dorian, eyes wide, and Dorian’s unsurprised when he stands up by himself.

Dorian stays low purposefully, and nods up at him when he glances at Dorian in shock.

"Outside then," Dorian says once he's upright, and he stands between the boy and the men as they move out the door in an unseemly, muttering rabble. "My apologies for the sideshow," he tells the bartender, and feels his blood fucking _sing_ as he heads out to the street.

He wonders what young alti are being taught in the circle these days. He was rarely challenged in his studies, at least until he was apprenticed to Alexius, and he has only grown more comfortable with his abilities in the interceding years. One’s skill has no chance to deteriorate when one finds themselves constantly fighting off the wyverns one’s partner is insistent on tracking down.

"Is this to be a proper duel?" he asks the young fucking whippersnapper, and the man — oh, the boy, let's not mince words — sneers at him, rolling his shoulders.

"You've made a mistake, but you've not realized it yet," the brat threatens. The bar sits on a side street and there is little foot traffic to contend with, not at this hour of the day. The right bastard stands in front of his friends, the lot of them posturing as though they expect Dorian to be intimidated at any moment now.

Dorian responds with a bright smile and sinks back into his favorite stance, how he and Dalish begin their sparring. He doubts he'll be in half the danger now as he is when she's the one lobbing electricity at his tender bits. "If I defeat you, you will transfer the ownership of the boy to me. Are we in accord?"

The alti mutter and laugh. Dorian waits it out, and they grow quiet — those in the half-circle beginning to look skeptical of the situation.

“If you can still walk when I’m done with you,” the brat says with a smirk, “then I’ll gladly let you have the bitch.”

When the rush of a frankly predetermined battle hits Dorian at the base of his skull he smiles, lets it stretch across his face almost painfully. He imagines he must look out of his mind, with how one of the children takes a step back, and another reaches for the sleeve of the brat as though to pull him away.

"Listen, Milo," the concerned boy says, and Dorian stands up straight, rolling his shoulders back and putting on his best sneer.

"You should listen to your friend," he says, and he watches it burrow under the bastard's skin, his expression warping into a scowl.

"Shut your fucking mouth, old man," Milo snarls, and Dorian drops into a squat — ignoring the twinge in his hips, sweet Andraste, he'd never live that down were he to mention it to Dalish — to miss a hastily-aimed blast of ice.

Dorian lays his palms flat against the cobblestones and pushes himself back upright, and with a hand cocked at his waist, gives the boy an out he won't take. "I'll forgive the grievous insult if you give me the deed to the slave now. You can walk away. Never let it be said that Dorian Pavus isn't a generous man."

The boy is unaffected — but Dorian watches the posture of two of his friends change, watches as they take steps back and their faces fall. It's fucking _exhilarating_ , name recognition for something worthwhile, something intimidating.

“Milo, we should really go—" One of them attempts to dissuade their foolish friend, and the boy curses at them and volleys another round of ice at Dorian.

He's not unskilled, surely a boon to his classmates and teachers aside from his appalling attitude. Nonetheless, it's a simple thing for Dorian to deflect the spell towards the stones behind him. Child's play, he thinks, and he feels the grin pull at his cheeks.

"Come now," Dorian prompts, and he pulls at the spirits that linger on this street, dead at the hands of alti like this useless bastard. Spirits that linger because they're angry, because they long for a tear in the veil to spill through and exact vengeance. Dorian can't give them that, but he can give them the chance to _terrify_.

The smart children, Milo's concerned friends, are hit hardest by the horror spell — stumble backwards over their own feet and run towards the main road, hollering as though an archdemon itself is at their heels. A handful of them show their fear on their faces, but freeze solid with it. Milo lets out a shout and tries to turn the spell towards Dorian.

It's an interesting idea, and were Dorian a child it may have worked. But Dorian easily defuses the spell, redirects the energy the bastard tried to control into poison, putrescence that oozes from the Fade as though the Veil had been popped like a water skin.

Milo staggers when he's hit by the spell but doesn't let it distract him, not too much — but Dorian can see the uncertainty in his form now, the anger on his face shifting, his brow furrowing, his mouth dropping from the sneer into a grimace.

"We both know how this will end, boy," Dorian says, voice calm. He summons a barrier over himself with a wave of his hand when the child lobs a spike of ice at him. "Given my reasonable offer and your overreaction, don't you think the wise thing to do now would be to relent?"

"Fuck you," the boy snaps, and Dorian watches the way he moves, the line of his shoulders and the movement of his hands. It's stylized, his form, not the rudimentary motions of the beginner, but he does not have the power to truly capitalize on it.

Dorian closes his eyes and lets the boy's next spell hit him dead on, take on the barrier Dorian's generated.

When he opens them again, there are licks of molten fire dancing on the stones, and the boy's expression has gone slack. Yes, it's unlikely even his teachers have been able to withstand that kind of assault.

Dorian of course accomplished it with his eyes closed.

"I was a bit of an arse as a young man, myself," Dorian says, and steps over the patch of flames in front of him. "Though I don't understand the desire to be — whatever this is." He waves his hand at the boy, whose cheeks are red with furious mortification. “I do hope that this has revealed areas of improvement for you to later practice. It does take some time to grasp how to compensate for the lack of a staff.”

“Shut up,” Milo hisses, and Dorian sees his next spell in the way he stands, the way he holds out his arms, how his hands cup the air around him. His posture’s open, optimized for letting the fire breathe as he summons it from the Fade, and Dorian is nearly impressed at the cone of flames barreling towards him. The brat could be someone, were it not for his pisspoor attitude.

Dorian breathes in and exhales cold, filaments of ice flowing from his own outstretched fingers to protect him — and then it’s only a matter of tugging at the earth and wind to blow the fire back in the brat’s face, using what he’s practiced for _years_ , what he’s perfected with a damnably unbreakable will to defend himself and those he cares for.

Milo screams — it feels like the comfortable chill of Dorian’s necromancy, trickling down his spine— and falls, his arms flailing about as he tries to extinguish himself. Dorian moves to stand over him, nudging his crisping shoulder with a toe. It all appears to be superficial; several hours with a healer, and he’ll be back to his arsehole self.

“My solicitors will be in contact with your family on the morrow, to ensure there are no issues regarding the transferral of ownership.” He glances up, at the brat’s cowering friends, and gives them a brilliant smile. “Your people will surely be able to get you to a doctor, if you so desire.”

They rush forward as though he’s given them permission, and he finds the slave boy against the wall opposite the bar, face pale with fear. Oh, Dorian’s shat all over this, hasn’t he — the child’s looking at him as though Dorian were set to devour him whole.

“My dear… hm. Please, call me Dorian. And your name?”

"Peter," the boy says carefully, as though too much emotion, movement, will bring Dorian’s rage down upon him.

“Peter," Dorian replies, and he tries to make his smile kind, how Bull does when faced with children. He thinks it must work, if the way the boy relaxes just the smallest bit is anything to go by. "Peter, I'm visiting Minrathous and have rooms nearby. Until the paperwork has been completed I fear you must accompany me. but we will sort that once we're able."

Peter nods once — still so justifiably suspicious of Dorian, slow to move and wide-eyed — and as Dorian turns he's interrupted by one of Milo's weaselly little friends —  a girl who'd seemed to recognize him when he announced himself.

"You... you were in the south, with the Inquisition," she says breathlessly, and Dorian feels a strange mixture of pride and displeasure at the recognition. "You're here for the session, aren't you? My parents — neither are in the Magisterium, but they’re grateful for what you've accomplished."

"As they should be," Dorian replies with an ease he suddenly does not feel, and he turns to beckon Peter to follow him. He nods to the girl still standing in front of him, but before she can open her mouth to compliment him again, he starts back off towards his rooms.

With the thrill fading, no longer running through his veins, he feels... unwell, and it’s not merely due to his combined hunger and intoxication. There was something in her face, the tone of her voice — how impressed she had seemed, after he had terrorized her and set her friend ablaze.

That particular brand of Tevinter ambition he no longer knows how to respond to.

==

"I'll have a cot brought up tomorrow morning."

Back in the comfort of his rooms, Dorian rolls his shoulders and slides out of his robe, hanging it over the back of the chair by the window. "For tonight, the sofa's relatively comfortable."

When he turns back towards his bed, Peter's standing in front of it, body completely still save for the hand held to the neck of his overshirt, starting to unwork its buttons. Dorian sighs, rubbing at his eyes. He can't necessarily blame the boy for his assumption, incorrect as it may be. He's certain not a single soul in that bar, or in the bastard's troupe of miscreants, thought Dorian had any other idea in mind when coming to the boy's rescue. His mouth feels dry. The thought turns his stomach.

"I've no desire to bed you," Dorian says plainly, and the boy's entire body shudders when he breathes in.

His face goes ashen, his mouth falling open and his hands dropping to his sides. "I apologize, messere, for assuming—"

Dorian shakes his head and lifts a hand. "No apology is needed. I've no issues with the assumption, but I don’t fuck slaves. I simply wished to..."

He frowns, and breathes out slowly. He simply wished to stop those wretched arseholes from harassing someone who had no choice in the matter. He wished only to intervene where he could be of help.

He understands, with a damning weight developing in his stomach, that he simply wished to protect someone, and that this child will suffer any side effects of his effort.

He inhales and holds the air in his lungs. He rolls his shoulders back and assumes a neutral expression. He pulls one of the finer vintages from his father's — fucking damnit, _his_ wine cabinet.

"I've paperwork to get to before tomorrow's session. Please make yourself at home."

He excuses himself to the room's attached office, sits in the desk chair, and foregoes a glass when drinking the whole of the bottle in his hand.

==

"How was your evening?" Maevaris asks him when they meet in the dining parlor of the Atrium Flores for breakfast. Dorian considers her for a long moment before concluding she knows nothing of his exploits, and is simply making small talk.

His hesitation has her curious however, so he lifts his brows and asks, coy, "Why, what have you heard?"

She frowns at him and he does not allow himself to wince, but he feels it in his bones. He's never done well with her disapproval. When they were younger, and he an infinitely less considering man, she could bring him to heel by simply inclining her head and lifting one shaped brow.

She lifts her cup of tea and drinks, and holds it between her hands. "Have you done anything that would reflect poorly on you today in the Magisterium?"

"Absolutely," Dorian replies readily, and her frown slides into a smile, though her words remain clipped when she speaks:

“Then I expect we have an interesting day ahead of us.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello friends!!! we are finally here with ch12, go team venture. [nyagosstar](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nyagosstar) and [mellyflori](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mellyflori) stepped up to beta this time round, and i'm so grateful for their eyes on this bit!
> 
> heads up though, lovelies. this is a tense chapter! (though everyone's okay!) there'll be light ahead, but this chapter ain't it. ♥

It doesn’t surprise Bull that the day after Dorian leaves for Minrathous, he’s requested again in Faustina’s rooms. There’s no pretense of his carrying up her breakfast this time — he just knocks and she grants permission to enter, and then he’s standing inside the door while she reviews the papers spread about her writing desk.

She waves him over with careless fingers and he moves to stand next to her. Looks down at her, at the dark skin at the back of her neck, between her tightly coiled hair and the stiff collar of her dress. There’s no doubt she’s a powerful mage — she wouldn’t’ve given birth to somebody with Dorian’s innate talent otherwise — so he’d only get one shot, were he to go for it. One hand around her wrists and the other around her neck, the inside of his elbow against the front of her throat. If he could manage to snap her spine before she could summon up a spell, he wouldn’t have to worry about her hands… Dorian can breathe out magic though, call fire and smoke from the Fade, so there’s no promise she’d be defenseless in the seconds it’d take.

The Bull slowly blinks his eye. Pointless thought exercise. He’s not gonna kill her. It’d be obvious anyway, and he’s not gonna have Dorian come back to Qarinus and find his mother dead and the Bull drawn and quartered.

She’s saying something about his accompanying her throughout the day and he nods firmly whenever she pauses, which seems to suit her. She likes being agreed with — is used to it. The only people who’ve likely ever gone against her are gone or dead, but she’s still… nobody’s as carefully vicious as she is without being afraid of something. He holds himself still for that reason, hands loose at his sides, shoulders rolled forward. She’s not the type to feel intimidated, but she’d probably not like it if he tried.

“Marcus is aware of my use for you,” she says, and she holds out a stack of sealed envelopes. “Deliver these to him and he’ll release you to return to me. I expect to leave within the half hour.”

He takes the dismissal for what it is and palms the envelopes. Half hour’s plenty of time to get to Marcus and back, so he diverts to the back hallway and slips into one of the women’s rooms, empty this late in the morning. He grabs a hairpin and heads to his own room, and lights one of their lanterns when he sits on his bedroll. He bends and heats the hairpin, testing the temperature after a few seconds, and works it under the seal on one of the thicker missives. It’s slow-going — he’s gotta make sure the wax doesn’t melt _too_ much — but he’s not a greenhorn.

The first one’s to who must be Halward’s brother, a lot of bullshit about the strength of House Pavus and Dorian’s triumphant return. She’s effusive in it, talks about Dorian like he’s never pissed her off or done wrong, and he wonders for half a moment if she’s ever honest in her presentation of herself.

He seals the letter using the heated hairpin and goes to the next one. He spent too much time on the first — it’s unlikely he’ll get through the entire pile — but anything’s better than the nothing he’d otherwise be working with.

There are invoices, a couple extravagantly-worded thank yous, a letter to one of the house solicitors about the latest revision of Dorian’s marriage agreement. When he’s running low on time he shuffles through the remaining envelopes to see if any of ‘em look particularly interesting from the outside. They’re mostly straightforward, but his eye catches on the third to last, addressed without the formality of the rest of the correspondence, just the initial “N” and a residence.

When he turns the letter over it’s missing the House Pavus seal — the wax is there, but it looks like it’s been pressed with, shit, Faustina’s thumbprint. That had to’ve smarted.

He gets it open same as the rest, and the letter starts with just _N_ — and gets weirder from there. It’s encoded, for one, but so’s the valediction — _with_ something, four letters, doesn’t show up anywhere else in the missive, aw shit, _love_  — so it doesn’t take him long to figure out the cipher, simple letter substitution. Enough to deter wandering eyes, but nothing more.

He doesn’t have time to decrypt and read the whole thing. He folds the letter and reseals it, and memorizes the address before slotting it back in with the rest. With love. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that Faustina has a lover. What’s strange is that with her husband dead, she’s still trying to keep things secretive. Worried about Halward’s family interfering, losing faith in her ability to run the house? Her lover somebody more scandalous than her husband’s slave girls?

He finds Marcus in the kitchens, passes over the letters, and hightails it back to Pavus's room. She has one of her girls with her, helping her into her presentation for the day, and he stands just inside the door and waits until she dismisses the help and turns to him.

“My son allows you a certain amount of independence, but I expect you to remember your place.”

“Yes, mistress,” he replies easily, and when she walks past him he calculates if he’d have enough time before she reacted to grab her by the throat and drop her to the floor, knee to her spine. He would, give or take a couple seconds. Seconds in which she could ignite his rags, leave him blistering and, more importantly, immobile once the initial adrenaline spike wore off.

He trails after her and thinks about how she moves through the house, like she’d expect nothing to happen to her here. It’d be a damn shame were something to take her down, maybe while she stepped carefully down the huge entryway staircase.

The Bull pushes the thoughts to the back of his mind, and holds the carriage door open for her, letting her use his arm to lift herself up and in.

 

==

 

It becomes a thing. He accompanies her pretty much daily, barring the times Marcus needs him to help with unloading deliveries — and she seems inconvenienced by that, when it happens.

Her husband must’ve handled the politics, the state visits and the keeping up appearances shit, because Faustina spends her time running the household, maintaining the day-to-day affairs of the house. They go to accountants, to the marble-floored markets uptown — “I should bring you more often,” she tells him with a calculating smile. “They capitulate to my bids more eagerly with a qunari standing over my shoulder.”

She places a hand on his arm and squeezes, as though they’re friends, and Bull ignores the sudden, _overwhelming_ need to wipe off his skin.

They end up at a tailor’s on the fourth day. She has him measured while there — he’s caught off guard by it at first, before realizing she probably doesn’t enjoy being seen in public with such shoddily-dressed help, given how shitty his clothes are.

It’s a uniquely demoralizing experience, standing there being observed and critiqued while a squirrely man and his assistant find new places on Bull’s person to stab with needles.

He ends up focusing on what he knows about Pavus, what he’s gleaned since starting as her body slave. She’s smart, but that he knew — she mentioned the advantage bringing Bull with her granted her, but she manipulates and outmaneuvers well enough on her own. _You understand why I would only expect the best from someone of your talent_ , she had told a dwarven tradesmen, her smile painstakingly sincere, and when she’d secured the price she’d wanted for an upgrade to the estate gardens she’d brushed her hand over his and squeezed, just as she’d done with Bull. It worked better on the dwarf.

She’s smart, and she’s got a determination in her that’s too fucking familiar. After the diversion to the tailor’s, she meets with her solicitors to discuss the marriage agreement and goes through House Orosius’s requests line by line, never outright denying any request but talking her way around it, until they reach the conclusions she wants. It’s how you talk to people with egos, or firm opinions — you make ‘em think they’re the ones who came up with an idea in the first place.

She catches his eye at one point during the discussion, and she holds his gaze until he has to look away — forced deference.

She’s good. She’s real good, and when he helps her into her carriage after the meeting she pauses before ducking inside. Looks down at him with an inscrutable expression on her face. “Do you hate me, Bull?”

The question surprises him but he manages not to show it. He keeps his arm extended, her hand wrapped around his forearm to help lever herself up, when he could twist it away and send her sprawling in the street. The position they’re in, he could grab the back of her neck and bash her head against the top of the door, the intricate filigree strong and delicate enough to do real, lasting damage.

He could hate her. Does she expect him to? Sure, with her organizing Dorian’s marriage to Orosius. That’s likely where she’s going with it, why she’s asking it right after the visit to the solicitors.

He’s not big on hating. Hating takes energy he’d rather devote elsewhere. He has enough bullshit on his plate without — and then he remembers how Dorian had acted after the announcement of his engagement to the fucking slaver. Thinks of Dorian’s devastation when she destroyed the Bull’s patch. Thinks of, shit, realizes maybe, how she’s made him a pawn in her game with her son, in their power struggle.

He shouldn’t waste energy on hating her.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She pats his arm and smiles at him. “Of course,” she says, and climbs into the carriage.

 

==

 

On the fifth day, they head towards the outskirts of the city, until the stones give way to dirt and the carriage has to go extra slow so they don’t get driven into the deep wagon ruts in the road. It’s about an hour before the driver — this dwarf named Rictor, one of the few people House Pavus actually employs — turns them onto a long dirt driveway lined by cedars, down which Bull can just make out a simple cottage with a garden beside.

The driver pulls them up right in front of it and helps Pavus out, like he’s forgotten Bull’s there to do it — which confirms Bull’s suspicions that this isn’t out of the ordinary, that she’s done this before. This is a common enough stop that the driver unbridles the horses and leads them behind the cottage, and everybody leaves Bull standing like a jackass by the side of the carriage.

By the time he gets himself sorted and heads around back to help Rictor out with the horses, they’re already watered and there’s alfalfa in a trough for ‘em to snack on. Bull comes up to Rictor anyway, to see if he can help wipe ‘em down, but Rictor holds a hand out to stop him.

“Horses’ll get spooked by your horns when they’re not hooked up,” he explains, and the Bull breathes out slow and nods, and heads back around front. Makes sense. Not a lot of qunari walking around Tevinter. Training only goes so far.

The cottage windows are shuttered and he’s not gonna try the door, no point in encouraging Pavus’s particular brand of wrath.

So he sits on his ass for a long while on the front bench of the carriage. He considers walking down the long driveway to the main road, or what passes for it out here. He could just piss off, get up and go. He’s not branded so nobody’d know whose he is; but the only thing more dangerous than being a runaway in Tevinter is being a lone wandering qunari.

He slides off the bench and heads back to the cottage instead. With the ease Rictor’s showing they’ve gotta come here fairly regularly, biweekly maybe, once a month. The horses knew the route.

He can’t hear anything from inside the cottage, even when he stands near one of the thin-paned windows. The walls are made of clay brick but that roof’s thatched — it’d go up pretty damn easy, with how dry Qarinus has been recently. There’s not a lot of reason to keep flint and steel around when everybody can set things aflame with a curl of their fingers, but he knows there’s a sort of emergency kit stored in one of the seats in the carriage anyway. He’d felt the edges of the false seat when him and Dorian had been together — had come out and investigated the other house carriages later when he was supposed to be asleep.

Rictor’s loyal to the House. Receives what must be a decent wage or has worked for them for a while, if he’s willing to keep his mistress’s secrets; but he’s an accessory, and it’d feel shitty to have to put him down. If the Bull managed it right, the dwarf could fall under the stampeding horses’ hooves when they spooked from the fire.

Idle thoughts.

Bull heaves a long sigh and shakes his head. He’s not gonna go through with any of them — and they’re a fucking macabre way to pass the time.

He ends up walking down the path back towards the road. He stops next to a tree, old with big hunks of bark flaking off of it, and it’s only a matter of seconds before he hauls back his arm and punches the thing as hard as he can. The pain sparks up his arm like lightning and his knuckles flare with hurt before it recedes to a dull ache.

So he punches it again, with his other fist — and then it’s not hard at all, to keep hitting the damn thing, to work on that ache until it blurs together into a long burst of distraction. Nothing in his head beyond the sensation.

He’s breathing heavily when he stops, and when he glances down his knuckles are a fucking mess, torn up and bleeding. They’re gonna bruise spectacularly — will still hurt when the skin’s healed.

He slows his breathing, focusing on the rise and fall of his chest, how the hot, dry air feels when it hits his throat. He returns to the cottage and heads around back. Washes his hands off in the cleanest-looking horse trough.

“You okay, qunari?”

He glances up at Rictor, who’s sitting with his back to the cottage wall and whittling something small and delicate. A toy for one of his kids, maybe. The Bull always forgets sometimes people have kids.

He nods. He doesn’t particularly trust himself to lie if he speaks.

He gets his hands relatively clean, and the water relatively filthy, and returns to the carriage to sit and dwell on the vibrating pain in his knuckles.

 

==

 

After what’s gotta be hours sitting on his ass and waiting for Pavus to finish whatever the fuck she’s up to, Rictor comes around front and hitches up the horses. Bull’s not seen any movement from inside the cottage, so the timing must be standard — and sure enough, as soon as the carriage is ready to roll, the front door creaks open and Pavus reemerges.

If you were just glancing at her, seeing her for the first time in a while, there’d be nothing noteworthy about this moment — but Bull’s been observing the woman for days now. Her hair’s been redone, in a tighter bun than it was when she left the carriage. Her makeup’s the same but her perfume’s different. Her clothes are just as precisely put together as they were hours ago, so if she was seeing a lover they knew how to work their way around a leather corset.

“You’re so good to wait for me,” Pavus tells Rictor with a small smile on her face, and Rictor laughs kindly in turn. She turns to Bull then, inclining her head when he offers her his arm to help her into the carriage.

“Thank you, Bull,” she tells him, and the sudden rush her cloying gratitude sends across his skin makes bile creep up his throat.

 

==

 

Faustina Pavus girds herself in silk and taffeta and gold, and works words as though they’re daggers, sharp and quick and hidden, at least until you’re bleeding out. She knows exactly what she wants and has no qualms about manipulating you until she has it in hand, and Bull can… respect that. That’s the worst part.

Shadowing her for a week solidifies the fucking loathing he has for her, the only response he can muster when she treats those around her, slave or not, as though they’re interchangeable obstacles between her and what she’s driving for. But it’s discomfiting, how after that initial burst of loathing, he feels… shit, like he’s gotta hand it to her — she wields a degree of severity and antipathy that he thinks must be necessary for how long she’s operated in Tevinter.

If he considers that for too long, he ends up on Dorian though — so he shoves it aside. He’s done what he can. He’s _doing_ what he can. He can’t do anything with Dorian half a country away.

 

==

 

“Tell me, Bull,” Pavus prompts one afternoon. She’s had him accompany her to a great outdoor amphitheater, where she’s ostensibly watching some sort of tragedy about the fall of the Tevinter Imperium. Dreary shit. The chorus drones most of their lines, and the company appears to have spent the majority of their resources on blood effects.

She seems mostly to appreciate the box reserved for her for the uninterrupted privacy it allows. Bull’s not sure she’s watched more than three continuous minutes of the play, but she’s worked her way through a handful of correspondence.

“Your devotion to my son is commendable, if foolish.” He’s standing behind her so he can’t gauge her expression, but she sounds calm. Conversational. “I’ve tried to understand in the time we’ve spent together, but I will be honest with you: I’ve no idea why you followed him here.”

He shifts between his feet and flexes his fingers at his sides. He doesn’t have anything to say to that — and he doubts she’s expecting anything besides. This is why she’s had him accompany her. She could be plying him for information to use in her battle against her own son, or she could be trying to endear herself to him, in her own vint way, to use as collateral later.

Shit, this time, maybe she’s just looking for something to distract her from the letters in her lap.

She watches the actors cavort on the stage — somebody’s about to die, probably, because there hasn’t been a spray of blood and choked screams in a while — and shuffles parchment, and when she speaks again he almost misses it.

“He was content in the south, wasn’t he.”

She turns her head towards him, her profile backlit by the setting sun. She’s rarely patient when she wants an answer, he’s watched her politely drag information out of people if they don’t provide it quickly enough — but she waits, silent, in the long minutes Bull doesn’t reply.

“Yes, mistress,” he says eventually.

She nods and closes her eyes, then waves her hand at him to continue, like there’s no doubt in her mind he’s gonna give her access to the last ten years of Dorian’s life. Access Dorian would never fucking dream of giving her.

He has no reason to tell her anything. He could spite her, deal with her mercurial anger if it arose.

Thing is, Dorian’s said multiple times — in quiet moments, with nothing but breath between them when they both revealed more than they’d intended — how his parents loathed each other. How they barely stood each other’s presence, and that with Dorian gone they had lost the one tangible thing they’d had in common.

 _They deserved each other_ , he’d said once. _Whyever wouldn’t I have wanted such a future for myself?_ And then he’d laughed.

It’d sounded like it’d hurt.

“He was happy.”

Pavus smiles, a small thing, and nods once. She turns back to her correspondence and shuffles it around before folding the lot of it under her arm as she stands. She reaches for the glass of wine she’s left untouched during the play and tips it onto its side, and walks around the spill quickly pooling on the floor on her way out of the private box.

Bull hesitates before following her — crouches down and swipes a finger through the wine, raising it to his mouth. He spits after he gets a good taste of it. Not enough in that bit to poison him, but had Pavus drunk any amount of it, she’d be seizuring fast enough help wouldn’t get to her in time.

Seems the Bull’s not the only one who’d see her dead.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I SURVIVED PEAK. go team. have a chapter of politics, very kindly betaed by [paperiuni](http://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni).
> 
> recommended music: [this sucker](http://8tracks.com/tinyloudmoron/with-age-comes-revolution-mix-one). my husband recognizes this mix when it comes on. "oh, you writing wacr?" yyyep.

It would be so easy to feel overwhelmed by the Magisterium, to stand back and gape at it like some backwater southerner too simpleminded to fully comprehend a building of glittering spires and magic-hewn stone. The great dome is covered in gold leaf and it blazes in the sun as though it were aflame. The pillars stretch towards the sky, and midway up each stand statues of proud mages, the pillars resting on their shoulders as they hold delicate ice and arcing lightning between their open palms.

Mae stands beside Dorian, and when he’s still for too long she curls her fingers around his wrist and squeezes. “Let’s not leave them on tenterhooks regarding our next treasonous venture.”

She’s been rather tight-lipped regarding the meat of the bill, though from his sneaking looks at the introduction, it has something to do with Seheron. Perhaps they’re looking to upset the apple cart and it’s some kind of trade agreement. If he trusted her even an ounce less than he did, he’d be worried. As it is, he’s left only with the low-level buzz of anticipation in the pit of his stomach.

“Where would these fossils get their excitement, without it?”

She laughs, bright and out of place amidst the staid extravagance, and together they walk through the great stone doors.

 

==

 

There’s quite a lot of standing and ritual to the opening of a session. Dorian lets his attention wander, allowing himself to focus on the men and women droning on about loyalty and patriotism as opposed to what they’re actively over-enunciating.

They are, each of them, handsome and beautiful and carefully blank — a sea of faces not unlike those Dorian attended university with — enduring the ceremony of it all until they’re released to express their opinions with razor tongues and a viper’s tenacity.

They sit as one, tradition appeased, and the consul, the voice of the archon, opens the session. There's bookkeeping to perform, new magisters to announce and welcome — there is a furor of murmuring when Dorian's name is read, and it sets a vicious smile on his face when heads swivel around to scrutinize him — and broad pronouncements, retirements and the like. There is a truly incredible moment where the consul requests a period of silence for Dorian's father, and it takes all of his self-control to not laugh in the middle of it, all of these ruthless bastards mourning one of their own.

And then the session starts, and magisters stand and voice their concerns and opinions, and it’s all remarkably like the advisory meetings he’d sat in on with Lavellan’s permission, though there’s a fine deal more grandstanding.

He pays attention as much as he cares to, to the trade agreements and embargos, taxes and allotments for different infrastructure projects. There’s value to each matter brought to the magisterium’s attention, he knows this, that each carefully-worded speech has the potential to affect someone or something… but after three hours of it, Dorian’s vibrating.

Mae wraps one of her well-manicured hands around his knee and eyes him, and he forces himself still. Forces himself to focus on Magister Sibal’s surely important opinion on grain allocations in Harrapa, and not solely consider how her name was on Alexius’s list.

“That woman,” Dorian whispers once Sibal has stepped down and found her seat, “would see the Archon dead if she felt it’d further her cause. If she felt it would be beneficial to the Venatori.”

Maevaris hums, and stares at the back of the woman’s head for several long minutes during which Dorian makes himself give the man now speaking some amount of attention. He’s talking about the economic upset of Decapolis, with the influx of cheap labor putting soporati out of work: “The last thing Decapolis needs is another ship of elves to replace paid labor.”

There’s a rumble of dissent in the crowd, and another magister shouts across the din: “If an elf could do their job, they’re clearly skilled craftsmen! Shame!” Laughter follows, and for one bright, brilliant moment Dorian envisions himself finding that magister, challenging him on the floor, and disintegrating him into a pile of ash.

And although that would be satisfying, it wouldn’t be politically savvy. His parents didn’t teach him to be so reckless, at least not when it came to politics.

When he was a child he wanted… he wanted a toy, or a book, something well within his parents’ power to give him. He tried to convince them, and his mother had smiled indulgently, and his father had sat down next to him on the rug in their parlor and taught him the basics of compromise, and of convincing someone that what you wanted was the best for everyone.

 _You don’t want a grimoire_ , Dorian had said — oh, he remembers now, how one of the older boys had been gifted a grimoire on enchantments and had seen fit to use it on obnoxious pranks. _You don’t need a grimoire_ , he’d repeated, with all of the skepticism his young mind could generate.

 _Then what do we want_? Mother had asked, her tone patient and fond, and Dorian had looked between the two of them for several considering moments.

 _Well, quite a few things_ , he’d replied — the precociousness of a child — and his mother had covered her mouth while she’d laughed, and his father had laughed outright, delighted by his cleverness. _You want me to listen to my tutors, and pick up after myself._

His mother had looked away, in a move he now understands was to more easily hide her laughter. His father had leaned forward, hands on his knees, and nodded once.

_And would you be willing to do either of those things, if it were to result in your getting what you want?_

Dorian had frowned. And then — and he remembers this with a crystal clear sort of clarity, as though the moment has been frozen in time in the Fade, and he’s been able to revisit it frequently — he’d nodded once. _I can pick up after myself_.

His father had looked down at him, appraisingly. _And you feel that’s a reasonable compromise?_

 _Obviously. Once you’ve given it to me, I can stop_. _I’ll already have it, so_.

His parents had laughed, delighted — and Dorian had felt the warmth of their praise flow through him like a physical thing.

The memory washes over him like a toxic cloud, and he holds his breath until he can manage to inhale without choking on it. He’s not naive enough to try and convince himself that his parents were never a decent sort, at least in practice; but he’s not interested in dwelling upon it.

Mae moves eventually, drawing him from his navel-gazing when she rises to her feet and descends down to the floor of the great round. He surely does not imagine the furious whispers that twist through the Magisterium, the words of those who loathe Maevaris Tilani for one of so many potential travesties.

The consul introduces her to lukewarm applause, and she tilts a smile at her audience.

“I come before the Magisterium this day to present a compromise,” she begins from the floor. She looks resplendent, her robes catching light, her smile perfectly curled. Knowing. Above the rabble.

Dorian considers analyzing the faces about the room, to gauge the reactions of those he knows to be Venatori, for whom Mae has been a thorn in their side — but there’s little point to it, when half the room despises her for her politicking, and the other half for who she is. He suspects that when the time comes that he himself should present legislation, the tepid reaction will be much the same.

If nothing else, he thinks with some amount of resignation, then at least the south has prepared him for every countenance to look upon him with loathing and mistrust. An excellent proving grounds for the Magisterium, that.

“There are those amongst us who would have the Imperium restored to what they consider its former glory. You know this as well as I. The unrest in the south would not have come to pass otherwise. The increased tensions with Par Vollen are evidence of it — and I would hope that, regardless of one’s view of Tevinter’s place in Thedas, both historically and in the present, we could reach an agreement that war with the Qunari is not in Tevinter’s best interest.”

Dorian frowns, leaning forward in his chair. He’s a fool for not realizing it — of course the ceasefire with Par Vollen, the ceasefire on _Seheron_ , has been stressed by warmongers and nationalists. If the Venatori have only flourished in the decade past, there’s no telling what the Qunari have thought of it. The Blights and the upset in the Free Marches were and are troublesome enough — there’s no way to gauge how the continued push for Tevinter supremacy has been interpreted in Qunandar.

For one blink of a moment Dorian considers writing to Bull to ask for his opinion, and the guilt he feels in response, for not having thought on him yet today, for only recalling him once he would be _useful_ , stops the thought in its tracks.

“In fact,” Mae continues, “we ourselves have shown, in the last handful of hours, how few resources we have to spread amongst our people, amongst our lands, without contemplating war. Without looking to rile the Qunari, whether it be in through the noble effort to reclaim our lost Seheron, or in defending our borders from their raiding parties.”

“You’d have us broker peace with savages!” a magister shouts from across the room, and while Dorian digs his nails into the arms of his chair, Mae’s smile wavers not a whit.

She turns in the direction of the speaker and lays her palm flat across the stack of parchment in her other hand. “I would have us prioritize the future of our glorious nation over the fear of monsters. A delegation to meet with those the Qun would send to us, on the battleground that is Seheron, to discuss the details of a treaty and work together to eliminate the Tal-Vashoth presence — that is the first step towards ensuring our future. A future where we will stand strong, and not be subjected to the barbarous north.”

She’s treading upon a thin line: entreating the bigotry of the Magisterium, while poking a hot iron in their eye.

A politician, Mae.

Dorian leans back in his seat and presses his knuckles to his lips. Legislation, even concerning Seheron, is one matter — but this wasn’t what he’d envisioned. This is… painting a target on her back, and on his. This is spitting in the eye of the Magisterium.

It won’t work. It’s obvious, nothing will come of it.

It’s brilliant, is what it is.

Within the room, there are varying degrees of protest already on the lips of three quarters of the Magisterium — save from whomever Dorian expects must be involved in Mae’s politicking already.

There is outrage, and disgust, and on the face of Magister Sibal, there is a calm anger that Dorian knows in his bones. Determination.

“You’re provoking them,” Dorian hisses when Mae retakes her seat at his side.

She glances at him, and smiles. It does not reach her eyes. “Beyond the pittances of words needed to maintain a nation, provocation is the only language of the Magisterium, my dear.”

“You’re putting yourself needlessly in danger.” Dorian exhales slowly and surveys the room yet again. Some have moved onto the next topic, paying attention to whichever magister speaks now — but there are some who remain ruffled, some who watch Mae even now.

Mae arches a brow and folds her hands across her lap. “Halward said the same thing.”

Dorian’s mouth goes dry in a matter of seconds and he finds it difficult to swallow. When he looks at her, she at least has the decency to appear contrite.

Not that one could tell from her response, when she turns back towards the floor to listen and quietly says, “I regret that he was caught off guard.”

 

==

 

Dorian is ostensibly present for the remainder of the session, but he has little recollection of it. There are discussions, some heated, with two magisters trading whipcord tight words over… something. Trade routes, or civic funds — Dorian couldn’t say were his life hanging in the balance.

As Mae’s life has apparently been endangered for some time. As his father’s was.

He manages to choke out, “He never said anything,” when the session breaks for the day.

Mae turns to him, her striking features twisted into a frown. “I wouldn’t have expected the bastard to.”

An abortive laugh catches in Dorian’s throat. “And you — the both of you worked together. On this legislation, on your rooting out of the Venatori.”

“He was a devoted ally.” She looks down, her eyes closing firmly for half a second, and some kind of laugh shakes her shoulders before she looks up again at him. “I take my allies where I can find them, Dorian.”

She reaches for him, placing a hand below his elbow.

He feels cold. It takes a substantial effort to move his own hand, to lift it and cover hers. “The letter didn’t specify a cause of death.”

Mae purses her lips, and looks out across the emptying seats of the Magisterium. “He died of a failing heart, if you are to believe the official report.”

 _Unsurprising_ , Dorian thinks in the breath between Mae’s words, _for it’s been more than a decade since it last beat_

“More factually, he died of a fatal dose of aconite ingested during a dinner party to celebrate Brother Petruvius’s promotion. It was quite the spectacle.”

Dorian swallows. He allows himself time to breathe, before he has to process what Mae’s telling him. It _must_ have been a spectacle. And perhaps as Halward lay dying he felt some ounce of futile regret.

Dorian’s solely disappointed to find the thought brings him little joy. “I’d have imagined he would have been too circumspect to risk his safety for something so essentially trite.”

“I’ve never endeavored to understand Halward’s priorities, nor his motivations. I imagine it would have made me cross much of the time, to do so.” Her hand tightens on his elbow. “We endured each other for our joint cause. We didn’t have reason to engage in anything beyond the political, praise the Maker.”

Dorian nods. He can’t find it in himself to respond in any other way. His tongue lays thick and heavy in his mouth, and he squeezes Mae’s hand one final time before pulling away from her entirely. “A solid first day, Maevaris, thank you.”

“Dorian…”

“And an equally pleasant trip down memory lane, courtesy of my father’s perplexing loyalties, which will now haunt me when I attempt to sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“ _Dorian_.”

“On the morrow, Mae.”

She clenches her jaw and smooths her hands over her lap. “On the morrow then.”

And Dorian more flees, than leaves.

 

==

 

Peter is ghostly quiet. He moves about the rooms as though he fears the sound of his own footfalls, and when he appears at Dorian’s elbow with the decanter of brandy Dorian had requested of him, Dorian starts, which sets the boy’s hands shaking.

“It’s fine, you’re fine, we’re all fine, hand it here.”

It’s possible, Dorian considers as he makes a grab for the drink, that he has already drunk enough to warrant a reevaluation of his continued imbibing, but he also knows from extensive personal experience that if one wishes to dull the sharp bright pains of one’s existence into background noise, one must drink until one can no longer feel one’s face.

Dorian _can_ feel his face, and this evening his skin feels too tight, stretched across his frame, as though he’s had a long sob and the tears have dried across the whole of his body. Fucking absurd. He’s cried his tears over that bastard.

“Domine, if only you would drink something—”

“Yes, that _is_ the plan, if you would only _hand it here_ —”

“Some water, domine, before you put yourself in an early grave.”

“Maker _forbid_ ,” Dorian starts, and then bites his tongue, to keep back whatever cruel thing his befuddled mind could drag to the surface in this moment. Easy, convenient. So _quick_ to rise to the occasion.

“I am wretchedly drunk,” Dorian says instead, and shakes his hand at the boy once and then holds it out, palm up and fingers spread, until Peter passes the bottle over.

 

==

 

Peter keeps a slave’s hours, turning in early — one must be up before the sun to care for one’s master — and so Dorian is left to his own devices. Blessed Andraste.

No one left awake to judge him for wandering the rooms, bottle in hand, robes loose and belt dragging. He’ll trip eventually. That thought comes to him with a strange clarity, and he brushes it aside.

He stands before the set of bookshelves in the office and slowly reads each spine, trailing his fingers across the dusty wood supporting each volume. House Pavus must have lapsed in its maintenance payments. Shameful. He should correct that.

There are books on law, and diplomacy. There’s something that looks old and in danger of falling apart, on the subject of _duels_ , and were he not doubtful of his ability to properly handle such delicate literature he would have it out across the desk in an instant.

And then there are his father’s journals: nearly a row of them, cover to cover to cover, each labelled in his father’s fastidious hand with a different session of the Magisterium. A scholar, his father. So meticulous with his notes, with his thoughts. Never let it be said that a Pavus is lacking in opinions, and unafraid to speak their mind.

He pulls out a volume from the middle of the row labelled _9:12 Dragon - Solis_ , and slumps into the desk chair, placing the bottle on the floor. It tips as soon as it’s set and he curses, stretching to reach it and finally abandoning it to the carpet when he’s unable to locate it again. Fuck it.

The journal has a bookplate on the first page, upon which his father had penned something about the weather — rainy season, monsoons, a wretched thickness to this air — and.

Dorian swallows, and considers making an attempt for the bottle again.

 _My son is speaking: mumbled words, but words nonetheless. He calls Faustina_ mama _. She promises me with the vicious brand of affection she has always shown me that upon my return, she will have taught him to greet me with_ you delightful fucker _. I told her I look forward to it_.

Dorian closes the book quickly enough that the snap echoes in the room, and he sinks back into the chair and… and lets the laugh roiling in his guts up and out of his throat.

He does not cry.

If he cries, it will be because he’s drunk.

Shitfaced drunk.

 

==

 

The journal weighs heavy in the inner pocket of his robe when he meets Mae at their seats.

“Before you wield baseless accusations, I wasn’t avoiding you. I was avoiding the sun.”

She keeps her expression bland, though she raises a hand to her breast. “And so you accuse me, that I would be so judgmental of your proclivities.”

“Oh, you’re not hurt,” he says as he sits, and immediately covers his eyes against the sconces’ bursts of lights reflecting off the gold leaf of the Magisterium walls. “My barbs are as water off a duck’s back.”

“Are you still drunk?” Mae lifts a brow. “You’re always more poetic when you’re drunk.”

“You wound me,” Dorian replies, but doesn’t correct her. He is, after all, still slightly drunk. It’s been years since he’s imbibed enough alcohol to wake in the morning with it still slogging about his veins, clouding his mind. He finds he rather likes the feeling of being wrapped in a layer of thick cotton, the low throbbing pain at his temples aside.

“Try not to fall asleep during the session, dear.”

She bridges the space between them and squeezes his arm firmly, and the both of them settle in for the mind-numbing monotony of the day’s arguments on a proposed tax increase on imported goods, and a viciously passive-aggressive discussion of tax breaks for anyone who uses skilled native labor over slaves.

No one brings up Mae’s bill to make peace with the Qunari. They’ve settled on having a hissyfit over funding for a bridge commemorating Archon Jubilatio.

 _Riveting_.

 

==

 

Peter passes Dorian a collection of letters when he returns to his rooms in the evening, and Dorian dismisses him before retiring to his bedchamber. There are several invitations, and a thicker missive from a name he doesn’t recognize. Peter’s papers, likely. He’ll provide them to Peter, and send the boy back to Qarinus. Even as treacherous as things must be at the estate, Bull will be able to look after him better than Dorian can.

The invitations were likely sent by rote — soirees to celebrate the beginning of the session, and dinners to allow the true work of the Magisterium to start, in back rooms and over many decanters of liquor. His eyes catch on one of them, thick paper and deep blue ink. Maevaris, of course. An invitation with intent behind it.

 _To the rise of a new Tevinter_ , the invitation reads, and Dorian fumbles with the desk drawer for a pen, to respond.

 

==

 

He’s grown tired of politics by eve of Mae’s party. If he never again has to hear two men nigh reach dueling over grazing rights, it will be too soon.

Mae laughs at him, kindly, when she sees the look on his face. “You didn’t think politics was only cruel barbs and clever witticisms about matters of life and death, did you?”

“Ah, but you see, meetings with the Inquisition have spoiled me. It was only ever the latter, with them,” Dorian replies, and stifles a genuine yawn.

Mae slides her arm through his and squeezes his elbow, once. “Then I will introduce you quickly, old man, so you may away to bed.”

He recognizes few of those clustered about the room, too many faces over too short a time, all of them blurring into an amalgamate of black and gold and determined pride. He considers slinking away from Mae’s grip and finding himself a drink and a wall to prop up, but Mae walks him near the center of the room and clears her throat pointedly. Someone rings a utensil against a glass, and the party quiets.

Everyone turns to them, and Dorian forces himself to breathe in slowly, then out. To smile. How lovely to be here, at the center of attention, again.

“My fellow Lucerni.” Mae gestures to the entire room, casting her own brilliant smile to each group of gathered luminaries. “Tonight we celebrate the start of a new session, and the emergence of a new ally. He’ll be quite cross with me, I’m sure, as I’ve told him nothing of this. But I’m sure he understands the need for discretion in these trying times.

“Magister Dorian Pavus. Welcome.”

The applause is far less measured than it was in the Magisterium: they seem to actually be pleased by Dorian’s presence amongst them.

He lifts a hand in greeting and Mae grants him a warm smile.

“I trust he’ll have many illuminated opinions to share with us, based upon his time in the south.” There’s warm laughter at this, fond and not a bit indulgent, and Mae lifts a hand to quiet them. “Welcome to the Lucerni, Magister Pavus.”

Mae’s efforts, then — a new political movement, to upset the balance in the Magisterium and contend with the Venatori. A room full of likeminded individuals who will fight for.

For a proud Tevinter.

Dorian thinks of Bull, tired and quiet, and sees a path forward.

He drifts throughout the party. He listens to discussions and self-congratulations about the legislation — how it’s only the first of their planned motions, and that they will make it impossible for the Venatori to remain concealed. To hide in plain sight, as a weasel in the grass.

He’s perhaps drunk too much wine, listening to them compliment each other. He finds himself speaking with both a businessman and a magister, or truly, listening. They’re quite proud of the Lucerni, and Dorian imagines they have reason to be. Their intentions are straightforward, after all. A proud Tevinter.

“And what of slavery?” Dorian asks in a strained voice, and chases the words with a mouthful of wine.

The businessman and the magister both look surprised, but not upset. It’s clear that the topic hasn’t been top-of-mind. The magister — Modi, if Dorian recalls correctly — smiles thoughtfully, as though charmed. “Slavery would be a fine thing to abolish, but throwing the country into utter chaos when there is real, effective change to be made is shortsighted.”

“Rooting out the Venatori benefits us,” Dorian replies, swallowing, tightening his fists at his sides. “But what does the slave care for who’s holding the whip? How is anything we do meaningful if a man wakes tomorrow morning still owned? Still _property_?”

None of the assembled are displeased: none would dare to be. A room of progressive minds, all of them better than their counterparts in the Magisterium, in their guilds — and there are still murmurations, narrowed stares, the wrong kind of thoughtful looks on people’s faces.

Dorian digs his nails into his palms and lifts his chin. “If we insist we work towards a greater Tevinter, if that is our end goal, then we must truly mean it.”

He says it more loudly than he’d originally intended. The room falls silent.

There’s a careful sort of applause, and the laughter that comes with discomfort, and Dorian feels the same anger grip him that did the night in the bar, when he watched the spoiled brat torment Peter. He would take each of these _activists_ to task for their boundaries, for their _fears_ —

His outburst is forgotten. His conversation partners drift away, and the room moves on quickly to less incendiary topic. They’re quite eager to avoid the conversations they do not wish to have. Dorian wonders where they’re keeping the rest of the alcohol —

There’s movement from the right. A woman, dressed as plainly as one can get away with at such an event in Minrathous, striding towards him from the edge of the room, her eyes trained on him.

Mae, standing at his shoulder, reaches for his wrist as though to placate him, but he turns from her in time to address the stranger upon her approach.

“Magister Pavus,” she says, and inclines her head.”I’m pleased to hear such rhetoric from the newest player in Tevinter’s game.”

“I endeavor not to let myself be so contrived,” he replies with a practiced laugh, and tries to place her. A slight woman, with dull blonde hair and a smattering of freckles, and a manner about her of one who doesn’t belong and knows it, and savors it. Had he seen her in the Magisterium this afternoon? At his induction?

“I am here on the request of a mutual friend,” she says matter-of-factly, and glances towards Mae, who’s moved on and is now speaking with a small group of traders across the room. Mae made no mention of her. Dorian believes this woman not a whit, but what was it Mae said? He’ll take his allies where he can find them.

She extends a hand to him and he takes it, and bends to kiss her glove.

“Magister Erasthenes,” she says, and he recalls an older man, more interested in books than people — a genuine inspiration of a human being. “But you may call me Calpernia, if you must. I was aware of your work with the Inquisition, but not of your abolitionist leanings.”

“I was unaware of them until quite recently,” Dorian replies too glibly, and she narrows her eyes at him.

“Clever,” she says, and it’s clear the words are not a compliment. “Then are you merely attempting provocation too, as little action as possible to ensure you feel as though you’re doing something without endangering your position? Or do your words hold actual merit?”

Dorian nearly laughs. Her manner’s refreshingly straightforward, after his having dealt only with politicians in recent days. “I strive to be a man of my word.”

Her mouth thins. “How many slaves do you own?”

His smile remains, stricken across his face. He thinks of Peter at the atrium. Of Amelia, and the elf Bull surely considers a friend.

Of Bull.

“Quite a number,” he says, the words thick on his tongue.

She looks as though she could spit in his face. “Few here have the courage to back up their words with action. Whyever did I assume you would be one, even with your time in the south?”

For one who speaks so poorly of provocation… He digs his nails into his palms. “And if I do?”

She smiles, if it could be called that. She still looks as though she’s considering spitting at him. “Then perhaps I’ve found a true ally in this den of snakes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how about them apples. LEMME KNOW IF YOU LIKED IT or hated it or what your favorite color is, idk, either via a comment below or on [tumblr](http://amurderof.tumblr.com/ask). ♥


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVES okay friends this chapter required a severe re-write, and the incredible [fiveyearmission](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyearmission) basically betaed it until it no longer reeked. she is incredible, and i am v v v v grateful.
> 
> thanks for hanging around, waiting for this to come out. <3

Amelia’s quieter.

He doesn't get the opportunity to even see her much, not anymore: she's been sent to bed by the time Pavus releases him, and the door to the kids' room has been locked every time he’s checked. Precautionary. One of them’s either tried to make a run for it, or somebody thought the kids needed — shit, privacy? Some extra modicum of protection?

Third time he finds the door locked, he stands in the hallway like a useless asshole and lets the pieces come together: they’re just kids, the boys’ voices nowhere near breaking, the girls still awkwardly-limbed, but if the slaves lingering in the Healer’s waiting room had been any indicator, age is less of a roadblock here. Amelia’s got maybe a handful of years before she’s Elaine.

He takes a walk that night, out in the estate gardens. He finds a pile of paving stones — broken and soon to be carted off — and heaves them onto his shoulders, chucking them methodically ten feet ahead of him until his muscles ache and his hands burn and his mind refocuses. Not a lot he can do while shadowing Pavus, reduced to being her leashed dog.

After Pavus's weekly jaunt into the boonies to commune with whoever the fuck stays sequestered away in that cottage, she sends Bull away while she writes letters. He considers finding a reason to stay, see if he can pick up anything of use while she plots out the next step in her particular brand of passive aggressive diplomacy, until he realizes what the freedom allows him.

Amelia's out in the gardens collecting trimmings with one of the freemen gardeners. Bull doesn't interrupt, doesn’t want to cause her any grief, sitting down on the bottom steps leading up to the house — lets her keep doing her work until she sees him and perks up, her eyes wide against her sun-darkened skin. She jerks where she stands, like she’d started off to greet him but remembered herself, and asks the gardener if she can be excused. Smart kid.

She doesn’t rush towards him as fast as she used to, but that makes sense. She’s been here a couple weeks now, long enough for the newness to wear off, the exciting terror of it all to fade to that dull roar of fear at the back of her head.

She hesitates in front of him but eventually sits down on the steps at his side. One of her hands immediately goes to her shoe, a practiced motion, sliding two of her fingers between the leather and her heel — relieving pressure.

"I like the flowers," she confesses, almost sheepishly. She glances over at the gardener, who's already started a pile of trimmings for her to gather when her break's over. "And the plants without flowers too. They grow a lot better here."

"Heat, humidity, and sun," Bull replies, and she nods.

"That's what Hortensio said when I asked. And then I asked if I could become a gardener too, and he said no."

"'Course he'd say that. You'd put him out of a job, smart as you are," Bull says, and for a split second a smile lights up her face, and she's ducking her head not because she's tired or sad, but because of her shy blush.

He doesn't head back inside until she relaxes enough to tell him why she keeps messing with her shoes and flexing her feet: her shoes are getting too small.

“You tell Elaine about that?” Bull asks, and Amelia nods firmly.

“And Liz,” she says, and he ruffles her hair until she’s giggling, batting at his hand.

He keeps the image of her fidgeting in her too-tight shoes as she walks back towards the gardener in the back of his head.

He tries to check in on her more often — seeks out Elaine when the kids are asleep to have her run him through their days, the tasks they do, how everyone’s faring. Nothing she says is much of a surprise. One of the boys has been suffering nightmares, interrupting everybody’s sleep; the door’s locked because she thought it might make him feel safer.

“It’s a small thing, but it seems to help,” she says, hands resting palm-up on the table almost beseechingly, like she’s at a loss. He knows the feeling. 

“Hey, if it works,” he replies, damnably useless.

It makes Elaine smile, though, so that’s something.

Another night she tracks him down instead, settles next to him. She hands him a mug of tea that tastes more like water than anything else, and he mumbles his thanks.

“It’s important,” she says, once she’s walked him through the kids’ last few days, explained how she cut the back of Amelia’s shoes so they’re not hurting her as much anymore, “it’s important that they have hope.”

Bull breathes out slow, blowing steam away from the rim of his clay mug. He doesn’t know what kind of hope the kids are supposed to have, with stunted growth and hard work ahead of them, and the knowledge that they can’t so much as shit without somebody’s say-so.

“That what keeps you going?” Bull says, the words coming out meaner than he’d wanted them to be, but Elaine doesn’t wince.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that,” she replies steadily, and Bull just nods.

They drink the rest of their fucking leaf water in silence.

 

==

 

Hope.

Hope’s for children and poetry. Bull doesn’t need it — and sure as fuck doesn’t want it — but that doesn’t stop it from settling heavy in his skull and fucking up the scenery at its leisure.

He grabs Liz one morning when she’s on her way to hang up the wash. He pays her half a dupondius to account for the oddness of the request. She eyes him suspiciously but pockets it, and agrees to get back to him within the week.

Then it’s just a waiting game of standing at Pavus’s side, two deferential steps back, watching her beguile her way through Tevinter’s elite. Her acerbic wit, the measured superiority, are familiar in ways he’s not sure he’s comfortable with — he keeps getting flashes of that time in Cumberland when Dorian played the clever businessman, and Bull, his trusted muscle.

“Master Sigmund has requested your presence at his lodgings,” Marcus announces once morning, and Pavus levels a scowl at him. Unfazed, he places the summons in front of her and slips out while she reads.

Her ensuing silence is something physical she carries in the line of her shoulders, that _he_ feels burdened by, for the rest of the morning. She reschedules her other appointments with delicately-worded notes Bull rifles through before delivering to Marcus, and then he basically just stands there, propping up the wall of her study while she reviews paperwork, shuffling through reams of contracts and accounting ledgers, and finally the preliminary marriage agreement between Houses Pavus and Orosius.

She keeps that in front of her for what must be an hour, adding paragraphs of comments in the margins and viciously striking whole sentences. Her solicitors — especially the mousy one who talks too fast — are going to be _thrilled_ she’s editing unmediated.

She eventually orders him downstairs to prepare the carriage, and he’s not surprised to see the morning’s been spent prettying it up — scrubbed within an inch of its life, the filigree shining in the afternoon sun. When Pavus emerges from the estate she’s fancied up too, more than she’s ever been for her mystery cottage. She’s wearing robes of folded brocade and enough jewelry to ransom the archon, circlets of gold around her neck and wrists and rings on her fingers: the wealth of House Pavus on full display.

It’d be gaudy if she weren’t striding forward like she was bedecked in knives.

Sigmund’s lodgings turn out to be a set of rooms kept off of one of the baths in the merchant district. Pavus is looking to impress, so Bull doesn’t hesitate in following her up the steps of the Thermae Aurea: what’s more impressive than one’s qunari, brought to heel?

The realization hits him at the same time that a tall, handsome, _familiar_ brown-skinned man welcomes Pavus forward, kissing both of her cheeks. Sigmund — Halward’s brother, the one Pavus wrote to.

What’s more impressive than the _prodigal son’s_ qunari, brought to heel? More exemplative of somebody’s power?

“Faustina, it’s good to see you,” Sigmund says, and Pavus easily constructs a smile for him.

“And you, brother.”

He invites her in, giving Bull only a cursory glance, and the three of them move into an elaborately red and gold sitting room, swaths of shining fabrics and glinting glass accents fucking everywhere. Bull understands now the purpose of the wealth Pavus is draped in — the place is chintzy in comparison to her deliberately indulgent attire.

Sigmund pours two drinks, and Pavus sets hers on the low table between them when she seats herself on a settee, arm laid across the back as though she were in her own home.

“I wasn’t sure you’d be able to find the time to visit, what with all you have on your plate now.”

Bull’s lingering back near the door so he can’t see Pavus’s face, but he watches the way she inclines her head, like she’s conceding something. “There is much that goes into the maintaining of House Pavus; but for what else _is_ House Pavus maintained, than for the benefit of its members?” Which Sigmund isn’t, at least not officially — the ease with which Pavus says it and Sigmund’s corresponding frown confirm that much. 

Bull hasn’t gathered enough info to cement the reason — he married into another house, or has no eligible children. He’s a Pavus though, at least in name. If it isn’t Tevinter’s politics keeping him out, then Faustina and Dorian are the ones standing between him and the responsibility of maintaining House Pavus.

Sigmund purses his lips. He’s pretty shitty at inscrutability. "Speaking of which, I would have enjoyed seeing my dear nephew."

"How unfortunate for you to have planned your trip to Qarinus while he attended to his duties in the Magisterium."

"Ah," Sigmund replies, and with an insouciant roll of his shoulders he leans back, crossing his legs. "It's heartening to hear that he is doing so. It's my understanding that he’s engaged, as well."

"House Orosius is well-established in Qarinus's markets, and taking steps to expand throughout Tevinter,” Pavus says breezily, as though she hasn’t been spending the majority of the day reviewing the marriage contract with a fine-toothed comb. “I'm pleased with the prospect."

Sigmund nods, and Bull knows before he even begins to open his slimy mouth that House Orosius isn't the issue: "Do you suppose Dorian's malfeasance is hereditary?"

Pavus holds herself more still than she has for the rest of the conversation. It draws the eye to her, a sudden calm amidst delicate knifework. The man leans forward like he's scented blood, his eagerness bald-faced, blatant.

Bull’s not sure how Sigmund’s survived Tevinter.

Before he can exploit the advantage, Pavus makes her move with her usual composure returned. "Dorian is, above all else, a Pavus. We raised him to be nothing but. He returned to his homeland to take the Pavus seat in the Magisterium, as is his duty. He’s engaged to be wed into a keen house, with strong prospects."

Pavus gestures towards Bull, and Bull steps forward immediately, coming to stand directly behind the settee. "In fact, he bequeathed his personal slave to the estate and I’ve found him a passable attendant. You can see he’s startlingly well-behaved for an animal.”

Sigmund scrutinizes Bull with a look that bends towards a sneer, and Bull wonders if Pavus has misstepped in calling him out. Easy to link Bull’s presence to Dorian’s _malfeasance_. But where their relationship was easy for Orosius to figure out back in Rivain, such a realization seems beyond Sigmund, who simply settles his expression into a frown and glares at Faustina.

“Halward would have been proud,” he says, and sounds equal parts bitter and sincere.

Pavus laughs and dismisses Bull back to the outskirts of the conversation with a flick of her painted nails. “Of course he would have been.”

 

==

 

After that shitshow, meeting with House Orosius the next day is like a walk through the Emerald Graves — fucking depressing, but kind of nice if you ignore the history.

Bull’s certain it’s going to be another step towards consigning Dorian’s future; instead, it turns out to be purely a social visit, with Pavus actually drinking the sparkling wine and eating the imported petit fours: fresh off the boat from Val Royeaux, just another upside to having such regular trade access to the south.

Satya Orosius, Lucretia’s mother, treats every word out of Pavus’s mouth like it’s straight from the mouth of the Maker; whereas Pavus puts the daggers away, actually engaging in civil, if shallow, discourse for once. Bull realizes more than half an hour into the visit that the two of them may actually be friends.

He’s still unsettled by it — and sure, what unsettles him is _friendship_ in _Tevinter_ — when Liz corners him later that night. It seems like she’s about ready to spill the info onto the table next to the bowl of potatoes, so he leads her to the back of the kitchen, away from prying ears. “Took you long enough.”

She glares at him, but doesn’t let her attitude interfere with her reporting: she lays out the days and times the Healer’s generally at the clinic, and when he seems to most consistently close up shop. “He’s twitchy, so it may change. He noticed me after 3 days, too, didn’t say anything but stared for a long time. Freaked me out. So — you know, he may be expecting something. Whatever you’re going to do.” 

She’s fishing. Kid could’ve been Ben-Hassrath, if she’d been given the chance, honed that part of her that wants to know too much.

He ruffles her hair because he knows it’ll piss her off, and while she’s smacking his hand, replies, “Thanks, _imekari_.” She swears at him, something about _damned cows_ , and pushes past him, making a beeline for the rolls fresh from the oven.

Bull wastes no time. In the last week, the Healer’s never been at the clinic before the sun rises. Pavus’s mornings start later, so no one will miss Bull.

He leaves the estate early the next morning, House Pavus seal conspicuously displayed on the left breast of his vest in case of questions, and makes his way to the Healer’s clinic. The streets are quiet, fishermen and slaves the only people hustling along the streets. He doesn’t go unnoticed — he _is_ bigger than pretty much everyone, and qunari to boot — but at least no one stops him.

Skinner showed him how to pick locks ages ago, stood over him and insulted his technique until she finally deemed it _acceptable_. He hopes she’s not disappointed in him now, half a world away. He works at the clinic door for a few very long minutes, during which he’s half-convinced a city guard’s gonna walk up behind him — there’s not a lot of shadow for somebody his size to hide in — but eventually the tumblers fall into place.

He eases the door open and doesn’t move, and listens.

There’s no obvious sounds of movement within the clinic — no surprised reaction to the door opening — and with a glance around the alley he slips inside, shutting the door behind him. 

The back room is completely dark in the early hour and he has to wait for his eyes to adjust. Gives him an excuse to keep waiting and listen, too, but if the Healer’s here then he’s better at subterfuge than Bull would’ve given him credit for.

But if you wait around for something to go to shit, then it’s going to. Once he can see well enough to not trip over anything, he gets moving. 

There’s little personal here: boxes of supplies; tools of the trade, wrapped in clean white cloth; herbs drying on nails embedded in the walls.

He finds a log book in the Healer’s desk, dates and descriptions of what he’s been treating. Some of it’s laid out clearly, a date with some general notes: _Abrasions on knees and palms, cause undisclosed by patient but likely the result of an unplanned fall. Potential for bruising. Provided tobacco leaf poultice & elfroot for pain_. 

But there are entries every few weeks that follow a pattern. A date, an herb, and enough extra words so they doesn’t easily stick out among the other entries. But he remembers Elaine and the Healer speaking in code, and all of the different things that the name of an herb can mean. 

Halfway through the book he notices a recurrence of a name in all of the weird entries. _The Magister_ , which is just as horseshit of a name as the Healer. Bull doesn’t know why the guy bothers encoding anything when it’s so clear he’s up to something. He’s operating on the belief that nobody’s gonna care what their slaves are up to once they’re outside their immediate purview — and while it must’ve worked for a while, eventually it’s gonna blow up in his face.

Bull returns the journal to its spot and digs through the desk’s bottom drawers, full of older journals, looking for past years. He finds one with a worn cover and the date, three years prior, handwritten on the first page in a cramped script. He starts flipping through it and — stops, his heart heavy in his chest. 

The last entry conspicuously mentions prophet’s laurel — pregnant human, if he’s remembering right. It also references the Magister, but there’s no long list of fake treatment.

It reads, _Prophet’s laurel to the Magister, unsuccessful_ , written through liberal splatters of old blood.

The next handful of pages are stuck together and when he gets them apart, there’s frenzied handwriting breaking up the book’s normal neat lines. The notes there are… weird, like the Healer was writing down his thoughts without editing any of it, an entire line of _I’m not sorry_ s arcing across the pages.

Bull flips back and looks for anything out of the ordinary with the other entries, but there’s nothing. He grabs another journal, a more recent one, and it’s only a handful of pages before the notes just — devolve. Until there’s a lot of stuff about forgiveness and mercy and vengeance, cramped in close next to the notes about tinctures prescribed for pain.

Bull feels the same sort of deep, instinctual discomfort he felt in the Healer’s direct presence, and closes the journal. Breathes out slowly.

He picks up the older journal again, the one with the blood, and slides it inside his vest before closing the drawer. He doubts the Healer will miss it from amongst the rest of his years of notes.

He’ll review the keywords with Elaine and ignore the creepy shit. He’ll double check that every time the Magister’s name comes up, that the herb it’s there in conjunction with is _somebody_ —  a keyword for a slave. That every time the Magister’s name comes up, it’s because the Healer’s routing everyone he helps out through them.

That whoever the third party is, all Bull’s gotta do is find them — and they’ll have an idea where the slaves they transport end up. Where Henrietta ended up, with Halward’s bastard kid.

Hope.

Shit.

 

==

 

Liz is waiting for him when he gets back to the estate. “You fucked up,” she says plainly, but she keeps picking at her hangnails and looks more worried than critical. “Her ladyship’s been looking for you.”

Bull curses under his breath and nods once. ‘Course she has.

He claps Liz on her shoulder — no wince, fully healed and no residual physical trauma, good — and heads upstairs. Pavus responds with a terse _come in_ as soon as he knocks on her door.

Bull’s seen how she gets angry — all ice and formality, same as Dorian when they’d first met. She’s mad, sure, he can see it in the clench of her jaw, but she’s also white-faced and her fisted hands are shaking.

“Where have you _been_?”

She’s scared.

There’s a couple ways he could take that — she’d been worried about her lost leverage against Dorian, for one. Or she’d been pissy he wasn’t there at her beck and call.

But neither of those would leave her standing in her gilded rooms at the heart of the Pavus estate, hands clenched at her sides, nails digging into her palms.

Bull considers:

_Somebody tried to poison her at the theatre._

_She’s been taking him with her everywhere, and she’s been doing a damn good job of acting like it’s because she likes the effect he has on her acquaintances._

_If that’s not the actual reason, she’s been using him as her bodyguard._

_She’s scared for her life._

There’s a couple ways he can play this — tell her that he’ll make sure Marcus knows where to find him in the future, or that he’ll provide her with his schedule for the day every morning. She could take either of those as flippancy, as provocation.

Faustina Pavus is not the kind of woman who handles being provoked well.

“Marcus can reassign me full-time as your body slave, mistress.”

He watches the line of her throat as she swallows. She’s holding her entire body tight as a whip, and when she nods it’s like watching stones shift. “If you insist.”

They both stand there like a dumbasses for a long moment before she seems to remember she’s got shit to do and sits at her desk, back rigid.

She doesn’t dismiss him.

He moves to stand behind her, up against the wall, and stays there till her appointments that afternoon. The journal weighs heavy on his breast.

 

==

 

They’re making their way to one of House Pavus’s accountants when somebody decides it’s time to actively take Pavus out. 

She’s been an exacting asshole since that morning where she mostly didn’t break down, so Bull’s on high alert as he helps her out of the carriage. He’s been thinking about how she should change up her schedule; if he’s already got it memorized after a couple weeks, knows who they’re here to see and how long it’ll take, then a professional would’ve gotten it pegged down quick.

He could figure out a way to suggest she change it up, an approach that wouldn’t hurt her pride. Messy business, this kind of tactful bullshit. Her death would just add another layer to what Dorian had to wade through.

He cracks his neck as he follows her into the accountant’s offices, pressing his knuckles against his chin. It’s a stupid move, given the sound covers up the footsteps he hears almost too late — somebody running, light on their feet.

Nobody runs in a financial district. All the criminal activity goes on behind closed doors, methodically and quietly. Outside, everybody just walks around acting like they’re the Maker’s gift to Tevinter.

He has half a second to reflect on what that says about the quality of the scoundrel headed his way, and then he’s moving. Pavus shouts something, equal parts pissed off and alarmed, and then the Bull’s got a hand around the human’s neck.

The Bull feels the Smite hit as the man struggles against his grip. Weird feeling, messes with some of his reaver techniques, but he doesn’t need any of that for this. He tightens his grip on the man’s neck and lifts him up, then bashes his head against the walkway.

Blood spatters the stone. Over the heavy beating in his ears he hears Pavus curse.

The Bull whirls around to find another assassin, an elf, hurtling towards Pavus with twin daggers out. Pavus hasn’t set them on fire yet so she must’ve been hit by the Smite too, but she’s not useless. She sidesteps the elf and — no, she didn’t get the Smite, she was just waiting. As the elf falls past her she reaches out: ice blooms across the assassin’s skin. The assassin screams, at least as long as they’re able, before the ice consumes them.

Pavus doesn’t hesitate before stepping forward and shoving the ice block over. She doesn’t shrink from the shards when it fractures into icy chunks of elf at her feet.

For a moment the Bull sees sand and barren trees and the cooling bodies of Venatori around him.

“You’ve blood on you,” Pavus says breathlessly. She glances at him. She hasn’t paled in the face of death, of two assassins coming for her, of killing a person herself. Once she manages to slow her breathing, she looks completely unaffected. Layers and layers of presentation. Impressive.

If he concentrates, he sees a setting sun and feels the wind coming in over the dunes. Memories. A decade ago. Not now.

The Bull breathes out long and slow, and shakes off everything but reality.

“Don’t know why you need me,” he says, and forces himself to survey the mess. The elf’s gonna defrost eventually. Not their problem.

“One can never underestimate the power of intimidation,” she replies primly, and as the Bull watches her, she rolls her shoulders back and turns down the hallway towards her accountant’s office.

The Bull doesn’t even consider how best to kill her, this time.

 

==

 

Marcus interrupts the unfluctuating tension of escorting a justifiably paranoid vint through her daily routine by knocking on the door to Pavus’s rooms one evening after dinner. Bull watches Pavus’s confusion at the interruption before she grants Marcus permission to enter.

“Beg pardon, mistress,” Marcus murmurs, as an unfamiliar elf boy follows him into the room and stands awkwardly still a couple feet before Pavus’s desk. “Master Dorian sends his regards from Minrathous, as well as this slave he has acquired. Pass the message along, Peter.”

Bull tightens every fucking muscle in his body, because otherwise he’s going to stagger forward and grab Marcus by the throat.

There’s no — there’s no _way_ Dorian went to Minrathous and. He’s. He’s missing something here. It doesn’t make sense, so he’s missing something.

The only reason Dorian would do something so asinine was if he were trying to cement something for someone, and who does he have to convince? House Pavus owns dozens of slaves. Dorian brought a qunari from the south as his personal slave, so _why_ —

But the boy — the slave, the slave Dorian apparently _acquired_ — swallows and steps forward, limbs wooden, and holds out the sealed roll of parchment to Pavus.

Pavus waves her hand across it, likely checking for anything that’d kill her were she to accept it. Once satisfied, she takes it from him, breaking the seal and spreading the parchment across her desk.

Bull’s accompanied her enough to notice the way her shoulders tense, slight but there, and how when she speaks her voice is forcibly even:

“Did you read this, boy?”

Bull does not imagine the slight tremor in her right hand as she holds the parchment. From the way he purses his lips, Marcus sees it too. 

Bull wants to grab her by the shoulders and demand she tell him what the fuck it says. What Dorian’s _doing_.

“N-no, mistress,” the kid responds shakily, swallowing and staring down at the floor.

Pavus purses her lips and folds the letter back up. “Marcus, take him to the kitchens. Find something to do with him.”

“Yes, mistress,” Marcus says with a firm nod, and takes the kid by the elbow when he heads out of the room.

Pavus is quiet after the door shuts behind them, her hands flat on her desk, her eyes fixed to the letter from Dorian.

Bull can see it clearly: pushing her away from the desk and grabbing it, soaking up the lingering scent of the oils Dorian massages into his skin, basking in the familiar slanting curl of Dorian’s penmanship. Figuring out what he’s missing, what thoughts could possibly be going through Dorian’s head.

The both of them stand there for what seems a year of Bull’s life; until Pavus finally rolls up Dorian’s letter, draws a sheet of parchment in front of her, and sets to writing, the quill moving furiously as she word vomits across the page. Whatever Dorian wrote set her off, but he can’t read any of it from this distance.

He scans the room.

He steps away from the wall, making sure each step towards her is loud — she’s been reasonably jumpy, after all — and reaches for the empty glass at the top of her desk.

She pauses in writing to watch him carry it to the side table and fill the glass. She waits until he’s placed it back on her desk to resume writing. Bull’s faking a crick in his neck to give him more time to get an eye on the letter when her quill snaps and she hisses in frustration, dropping the thing and spreading her fingers like she’s been burned.

The letter’s not to Dorian. It’s to fucking House Orosius, and the first line reads:

_House Pavus wishes to proceed in securing its line. If it is agreeable, then the wedding shall take place during next month, a nontraditional yet fortuitous time to align our futures._

The Bull hesitates. She’s distracted. He could do a lot of damage before she pulls herself together.

She breathes in quickly, harshly, the same sound Dorian makes when he’s trying not to cry.

Bull swallows, tongue thick in his mouth. He returns to his position against the wall and presses his eye closed.

 

==

 

Faustina changes her schedule up. She doesn’t go to the cottage in the middle of nowhere, and she writes more than she normally does — sends letters to her solicitors, follows up with her accountant.

There’s another letter to Halward’s brother, praising Dorian highly and describing much of the wedding planning she’s been managing directly. It’s strikingly uncritical of him, and while it touches on his efforts in the current session of the Magisterium, there’s no mention of who he’s been accompanying. Not surprising that Pavus wouldn’t think kindly on Magister Tilani.

_Dorian’s time with the Inquisition has done him well, and only made him an even more formidable political opponent. We are blessed to have him back with us_.

Bull wonders who exactly she’s trying to convince, and of what.

There’s a note to the mysterious _N_ too, and it’s a faster read now that he knows the cipher. Bull’s certain whoever it is, they live in that cottage Faustina’s no longer visiting — there’s an apology halfway through, no explanation behind it.

There’s another line that trips Bull up when he cycles back through it, one he didn’t catch the first time because it’s so unexpected:

_I will not let my son be devoured, by himself or Tevinter_.

The next paragraph’s a description of her most recent trading ventures with some dwarf, and how she’s acquired a surplus of silk for next season.

Bull stares at that sentence for too long, time he should spend figuring other shit out, looking at the other letters.

He ends up shoving it haphazardly back together and sealing it moderately well. When he drops the parcel of letters off, Marcus eyes him with concern, and Bull schools his expression blank.

He shadows Pavus for the rest of the evening, and lies on his shitty bedroll for hours before he passes out.

He wakes with the line still in his head.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> life has been kicking my butt repeatedly!! (why does yearbook season happen to innocent and sweet and wellmeaning book manufacturers?) but our garden's growing well, and i've beaten this chapter into what is hopefully a delightful pulp.
> 
> huge thank you to my beta [fiveyearmission](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyearmission), who continues to be a valiant rock star, and gives some of the best advice i've ever gotten, writing-wise and otherwise.

The problem with provocation, Dorian is learning, is that there is no use in it if you’re simply provocative for provocation’s sake — you must be able to defend it.

“This legislation requires no committee,” Magister Iyer sneers. He’s no Venatori — simply another vint with delusions of grandeur. Dorian feels a headache coming on. “Merely taken at face value, it lays a path towards treason.”

Mae shifts beside Dorian, but remains quiet. Dorian surveys the members of the committee called to discuss the Lucerni’s treaty and leans forward in his chair. “Is peace treasonous, then?”

“Peace with the Qunari lays the groundwork for the dissolution of our very way of life,” Magister Bhakta states, and folds her hands on the table between them. As with Iyer, Dorian hasn’t had sufficient time to learn anything of import about her, aside from her stalwart bigotry. “The Qunari are a brutish race, our opposite in every way. I trust I don’t need to enumerate every difference.”

“You should, regardless,” Tarquin, the lone Venatori in the group and someone Dorian’s had little desire to see after their disastrous lunch in Qarinus, says, “for Magister Pavus has been away for so long that he may have forgotten the dangers they pose to us, we who sit across the sea from Par Vollen.”

“I grew up in Qarinus,” Dorian replies steadily, and thinks of each word as a stone lobbed at Tarquin’s forehead. “I have experienced the terror that accompanies an incoming Qunari raid. I’ve also much experience dealing with those who would support a darkspawn magister and strive to bring about the end of civilization.”

Next to him, Mae resettles in her seat, hands folded together on her lap. Comfortable. Just a hint disrespectful. He’s missed that element of her personality, amidst all of the polite politicking. It’s good to see it now, when he struggles to be patient. To endure this staid discussion.

“The cultists who accompanied your Corypheus were exterminated with his defeat,” Bhakta says neatly. “Your ‘much experience’ does little to aid Tevinter’s withstanding an assault of oxmen, or dealing with their abused slave mages.”

Tarquin chuckles dryly, and Dorian imagines how satisfying it would feel to grab the man by the throat and beckon the spirits that must cling to him, to capitalize on the fear and hate Tarquin’s engendered within his lifetime. To hear him caterwaul and beg for mercy, and to offer it only through death.

Dorian digs his thumb into the meat of his other palm.

Tarquin bleats, “But then you brought one of them with you, didn’t you?” and the words scald every inch of Dorian’s skin. He doesn’t react. He wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction of a successful hit. “I hear your mother has employed it quite successfully as a bodyguard — took down an assassin the other day with its bare hands. Perhaps you’re interested in supplementing your fiancée’s trade with heartier stock.”

He loses the trajectory of the conversation. He finds it difficult to breathe. He finds it difficult to think on anything but reaching across the table for Tarquin’s throat, digging his nails into paper thin flesh. He could cast a spell to hasten the action, leaving those who would sit by and let Tarquin spew poison to deal with his blood on their robes. A boon, for future spell-casting, Dorian could say. A boon for—

“This legislation is not about Magister Pavus,” Mae interjects smoothly.

_None of this is about Magister Pavus._

—and the anger flowing through Dorian is abruptly stoppered up.

And yet he is here, arguing the intricacies of legislation he cares little about, in order to progress a cause he’s been made part of.

The anger can only then redirect itself inward, burning at his throat, and shatter the walls he’s carefully constructed since he stepped into the carriage in Qarinus.

It’s been a straightforward thing, to hold thoughts of Bull at arm’s length, to devote time to what is immediate, to what is in Minrathous. Even when he bowed to Calpernia’s demands, to her requirement that Dorian prove his loyalty — a missive to his mother ordering her to release the whole of House Pavus’s slaves, a command she must have found unpalatable, at the least — it was done with the intention of establishing himself. It was not to ease the suffering of any… It was, Dorian thinks loathingly, about Magister Pavus.

Dorian presses his tongue against his teeth, then bites down. The pain provides him focus. Prevents a spiralling of sorts.

There’s nothing to be gained from dwelling on — on how Bull is in more danger than he was before, than he has ever been. On Dorian’s flawed conclusion that the wrath of his mother would be anything less than what it is, and that Bull would be safer alone than when she could play them off of each other.

A damnable thought, that Dorian’s absence would somehow calm her ire. Naive. _Stupid_.

Bull came with him to Tevinter because the both of them are fools — and Dorian has left him. Bull would disagree with him, but Bull is too good of a man.

Peter would have arrived in Qarinus by now. Did Faustina decide to simply ignore his request outright? Would she further subjugate Bull, in her ongoing crusade to teach her son a lesson?

He feels the phantom weight of the dragon’s tooth he no longer wears around his neck as though it were a millstone.

This is what love becomes in Tevinter: two men bleeding out without recourse.

Dorian swallows back that thought like bile. He unclenches his fists in his lap. He focuses on his breathing. He focuses on...

“None of us knows a world without war with the Qunari,” Mae is saying, when Dorian is able to make sense of the words around him, once he’s forced the frantic fear down enough to simply churn his stomach instead of clawing at his throat. “We’ve accepted it as the status quo when there’s no enduring justification for it. We are different, but no more different than Tevinter and Nevarra, or the Anderfels. What could we accomplish were we not continuously losing resources to such a futile conflict?”

 _What does this matter?_ Dorian wonders with a desperation that is too all familiar to him, that stinks of Tevinter.

Iyer’s face contorts into a grimace. “You would have us lay down at the feet of the Qunari, to be conquered.”

 _Make it matter_ , he finds the strength within him to insist.

Why else is he here, if it doesn’t?

“The Qunari are not above treatises.” Dorian says, relieved his voice doesn’t so much as quaver.

The lot of them turn as one towards him, and Dorian breathes in slowly and leans forward, placing his palms on the table. He was born to this, after all. “They were willing to work with the Inquisition once for a cause they found justified. We are not the only nation draining ourselves to pay for this stalemate. It’s not above reason to consider that they may be amenable to compromise.”

“A hopeful thought,” Tarquin says, the faint praise digging sharply behind Dorian’s sternum. “Though the Inquisition was not populated by the Qunari’s most hated enemy.”

“Oh, no,” Dorian replies. His voice sounds airy, patronizing. He’s distantly proud of the act. “It was simply led by a bas saarebas.”

Bhakta laughs brightly, if incredulously. “You would have us accept that the Qunari are infinitely more complicated creatures than Tevinter gives them credit.”

“They are no less intelligent than those that make up the Magisterium,” Dorian replies brittlely, and the sharp laughter in the room allows the conversation to move forward.

Dorian ensures he pays attention to every miserable word.

Later, after he has retired to his rooms and soaked himself in too-hot water until he’s able to think of little else than sluggish heat and humidity, he sits at his desk to answer what correspondence he’s received. There seems to be an endless pile of it, and he wishes Peter were still here to assist — he closes his eyes and is silent, still, until the thought dissipates.

Peter is in Qarinus, and if his mother has proceeded with his request, then he will be the first slave freed.

It’s unlikely she’s done so. He has no trust in her to carry it through, but the action was paramount to his securing Calpernia’s trust. And it was the right thing to do, besides.

The whole measure feels unspeakably insincere. Calculated. Self-serving. He supposes that’s politics.

He feels an affinity with his father he will not dwell on.

  


==

  


He dines with Calpernia, who eats nothing on the plate in front of her. Dorian hesitates to take the first bite until she assures him it’s not poisoned — she simply has more on her mind than food.

“I’d like you to accompany me tonight. Dress poorly,” she tells him.

Hours after the sun has set he stares at his assembled clothing and allows himself the luxury of despairing over something completely imbecilic, just for a moment, until his gaze falls upon the saddle blanket Bull had given him as he left.

He almost expects a shock, when he touches it, a deserved rebuke for his leaving it so neglected. When he pulls it from the trunk it’s simply cool to the touch, and it scratches his skin when he holds it to his face. A gentler reprimand, in keeping with Bull’s manner, and less than is justified.

He wipes the makeup from his eyes and cheeks and sheds his jewelry. His thumbs rub over the calluses at the base of each finger, foreign to him without his rings. He dresses down — perhaps not as poorly as Calpernia would dictate, but he must work with what he has — and wraps the blanket around his shoulders as a shawl, a heavier weight than it should be.

He breathes the scent of it in. He’s not sure it’s ever been washed. That would have bothered him, even a year ago.

He meets her at the crossroads she specified, and she beckons him to follow. They don’t attempt to be inconspicuous but he feels as though their venture is secretive regardless. This could be any of the outings he took with the Chargers, concealing themselves until they were in position—

He pushes the memory aside and hates himself for it.

They walk for what must be two miles, until they approach a tavern where a guard standing outside inclines her head when Calpernia moves past, and Calpernia straightens to her full height and pushes her hood back and off of her head. She continues forward into the back room and immediately makes her way around each of the people seated there, making small talk, asking after their children, their businesses. Dorian stays just inside the doorway and watches her move — and he’s dissatisfied to say he doesn’t notice the pattern of it until she’s halfway around the room.

She asks the same question, voice quiet but clear: _Is your family well?_

The response can differ, but it’s always similar: _Well, magister._ Or: _They will be, magister._ One man frowns up at her from where he sits, glancing quickly to Dorian, before he responds with, “The children sleep, magister.”

Calpernia’s expression twists, and she grasps the man’s wrist while he takes hers. “May the Maker bless their slumber. May you find find strength in their sacrifice.”

He nods, then looks again at Dorian.

“He’s family,” Calpernia replies with a tight smile, and glances at Dorian too. Her expression loses its tension. “He seeks to be adopted.”

A quiet murmur spreads in the room. Dorian forces himself to move away from the relative concealment the entranceway provides. He starts to introduce himself but hesitates, remembering the time he and Grim had to infiltrate yet another Antivan den of scum and villainy in search of a client’s pilfered heirlooms.

“Joshua,” he says, and doesn’t smile. He lets his shoulders drop with the weight of the exhaustion and desperation he tries not to feel most of the time.  He thinks of the smile that would split Bull’s face after Dorian recounted Grim and his successful espionage. He thinks… No, he does not think. He’s not sure he can handle thinking without a drink in his hand. “Minrathous.”

One of the women, a dwarf — and that’s a surprise, most of Tevinter’s dwarves carefully keep themselves out of politics: it’s bad for commerce — snorts and rolls her eyes. She says, “You’re wasting your time, Cal,” and the assembled grumble amongst themselves in agreement.

Calpernia purses her lips, considering, then takes a seat at the dwarf’s table, grabbing a roll and tearing it into chunks before eating it. “I’ve access we didn’t before. Perhaps you should speak with your family, as they’ve their hands in so much of the Magisterium’s pockets. What speaks better than coin?”

This must be a sore point — someone laughs, and the dwarf flushes with anger. She drinks from her mug and slams it back on the table, then points at Calpernia fiercely. “Changes aren’t made through the passage of laws.”

“The Magisterium wastes all of our time,” a man seated at another table adds, and Dorian feels abruptly ill when he realizes the man, an elf — his ears have been docked. He thinks of Skinner spitting _knife ear_ with revulsion, and he thinks of the statue in his father’s garden, of the elves burdened with the weight of Tevinter on their shoulders. _Maker’s arse_ , he berates himself, _do not think_. “They move with the speed of those who want change, but don’t need it.”

Calpernia sits quietly, looking from face to face as people talk, as they criticize the tepidness of the Lucerni and the proposal of peace with the Qunari. Dorian watches Calpernia. He doesn’t have the fortitude to look upon the frustrated exhaustion, the simmering anger of those assembled, and hold his tongue as he must.

“Perhaps they think themselves circumspect.” Calpernia gazes at Dorian when she says it. He doesn’t rise to the bait.

“Fuck ‘em,” the elf says. “We’ll die waiting for their revolution.”

“Finally brought to pass when enough are bribed into agreement,” a human man adds. The hood he wears drawn down over his head doesn’t hide all of the scars marring his dark skin. “The only way to change anything in Tevinter is by the sword. The laws will have loopholes, allowances. We’ll be told we need to be patient _again_ , patient while they retire to their estates and gardens, waited on by _our_ families. While we die for their complacency.”

Calpernia brought him her to hear this, Dorian considers, as yet another one of her tests. He has listened, and he’s not let himself dwell on any of it, and he’s said nothing.

Regardless, when they leave he grabs her by the arm so she doesn’t get a chance to disappear on him before he can have his say. “I don’t need to be lectured,” he hisses, the words almost too loud where they stand in the alley.

Calpernia doesn’t try to shake off Dorian’s grip, just waves a hand towards the guard watching them from outside the tavern. “The treaty with the Qunari is a poor diversion.”

“Perhaps it’s working as intended.”

“Is it? What is being done with the diversion?”

The both of them know the answer to that question: it will back the Venatori into a corner, until they have no choice but to respond in force and reveal themselves.

But none of it has been done to free Tevinter’s slaves.

“The Venatori,” Calpernia snaps, her arm flexing underneath Dorian’s fingers, “are children seeking approval from a wayward god. They are not the sickness festering within Tevinter. The Lucerni would rid Tevinter of the mole on her cheek whilst letting her succumb to blood poisoning.”

Dorian has not been made privy to much of the work Mae and the Lucerni have done — the time they worked towards their goals he has spent in the South, with those who would be his family.

He realizes with a sudden clarity that he has little chance of ever catching up. He has come to Tevinter with ideals and impetus, to find that Tevinter has been struggling for years.

He swallows down the helplessness. Futility is a paralytic and he can’t let it take hold. He _can’t_. “I’m willing to do what I must to make our cause a reality.”

She looks up at him for a long moment. He forces himself to meet her gaze. He has no answers for her. He’s politically impotent beyond what his presence provides. He’s little more than a pawn of his house. The man he loves, who loves _him_ wholeheartedly, against all reason, is waiting for him hundreds of miles away, enslaved.

Calpernia jerks her arm from Dorian’s grip. “Goodnight, Magister Pavus.”

He doesn’t follow her.

  


==

  


There are no committees, no sessions the following morning, but Dorian finds his day set for him regardless upon pouring himself out of bed and into his dressing gown.

Calpernia stands in the sitting room in front of the bookshelves filled with his father’s journals, plucking them one by one off the shelves as though Halward’s anecdotes and ancient agendas could hold any amount of interest for her. Dorian imagines she’s already discovered anything she wished to in his personal effects while he slept.

He clears his throat and pushes away the annoyance — not to mention a thread of disquiet — at having found her in his rooms. “May I help you?”

She hums, impenitent, and Dorian leaves her to her continued perusal. He needs to dress, and perhaps imbibe something to quell the sudden thundering between his temples.

“Unannounced callers should appear in the evening hours, don’t you think,” he tells her once he’s settled himself into more presentable attire. He pours himself a glass of cognac, and sighs loudly  when she doesn’t so much as look at him. “But since you’re here, I expect you’ve something astonishing with which to enlighten me.”

She draws a gloved finger down the spine of one of the journals, and Dorian seems to feel the touch, as though she were trailing a blade down his own spine. Her presence is unsettling enough. Her silence, when usually she strays towards sly invectives, is infinitely more troubling.

She ignores him until he’s near drained his glass, and then she says without turning towards him, “House Pavus has taken in another slave. There have been no other changes to the running of the household.”

He expected as much. The words still hit him as though they were a physical attack, or a weight dropping on his chest. At what point has the scion of House Pavus had any measurable power within its confines? “I’ve heard no such thing.” His voice cracks. He takes another drink.

He has no idea how Calpernia would have this information — but no, that isn’t true. She could have eyes throughout Tevinter, throughout the major cities and placed strategically within the Houses to gather such information when necessary. Having such knowledge would suit her, and be ever so useful when harassing magisters within their own homes.

She finally turns her back on the books and raises a brow at him. “Your mother has been frequenting House Orosius this past week. Preparations must be underway.”

She hasn’t moved on from the failure of his liberating his slaves — the marriage is tied to it, though he’d prefer not to dwell on it. It serves as a perfect storm of Dorian’s unsuitability. It claws at his gut, this repeated judgment for things beyond his control, his efforts falling so far short of expectation there’s no point in acknowledging them. He mustn’t allow her to constantly put him on the defensive — he’s done what was in his limited fucking power to do.

He pushes past the need to excuse himself, to continue to prostrate himself before her, and draws a practiced smile to his lips. “I was unaware you had such an interest in my personal life.”

Calpernia purses her lips. She so rarely finds him clever.

“You will be wed to a slaver, then,” she continues, no interest in his attempt to glide past the topic. “A strong position to take, to promise to release your house’s slaves and then bind yourself to a woman who profits off of the ownership of others. I trust you’ll understand my doubt of your sincerity to our cause.”

He’s done a damned good job of avoiding all thoughts on his imminent shackling to Orosius. Regardless, he shouldn’t be surprised that wedding preparations are underway. He’d just assumed he’d have a year or more, both to come to terms with its being a reality, and to figure out what he was going to do about it. If preparations have already begun...

His mother’s machinations continue to outperform his expectations. He seems destined to underestimate her — a resounding assessment to his intelligence.

He finds that he’s still smiling. At least he is successful in the physicality of his role. “And you will understand that my mother’s actions are not my own, and should be interpreted as such.”

Calpernia smiles at him, a lousy thing that would make milk curdle. She may believe him, but he can’t be sure of it. He wonders what he’s attempting to accomplish by winning her over.

As though hearing him, she replies, “I had thought to introduce you to the rest of my network, so that you may appreciate what we have achieved in Tevinter, and what we will achieve. I find now that you’ve stronger ties to the rot than the cleansing pyre.”

“You speak broadly of what you have little insight into.”

“Then prove me wrong.” Calpernia brushes her gloved hands together, as though she has need to rid herself of any lingering dust from the journals, and sees herself out.

Dorian bolts the door behind her immediately. He locks the windows as well, though he knows it wouldn’t prevent someone determined from entering. Clearly it already hasn’t. He’ll need to place wards, purchase runes from one of the underground dwarven markets and place them under the sills and around the frames.

He’s breathing heavily once he’s finished, though not from exertion. He feels as though he’s been debating on the floor of the Magisterium for hours, instead of simply being  strategically insulted by one who should consider him an ally.

Mae had told him that took her allies where she could get them, in Tevinter. Tevinter is not particularly fond of Dorian, and so perhaps he’s learning to do the same.

  


==

  


He drinks, steadily, a continual stream of liquor to encourage the words he’s laid across the parchment, dripping with overwrought sincerity and buoyant praise. Orosius will see through it in an instant. Perhaps that’s the point, that given her intended’s change of heart she will hurtle herself to Minrathous to put a stop to it as quickly as possible. He posts the letter with the final courier of the day.

The rest of the evening is wasted attending a dinner hosted by one of the more blatantly politically-motivated Lucerni, a merchant who seeks to open trade routes to Rivain and Par Vollen. After the fifth toast to the looming success of their treaty with the Qunari — though no delegations have been sent, and surely nothing has been signed — Dorian absconds with one of the bottles of wine decorating the table and attempts to locate a carriage to escort him home.

Mae interrupts his flight, her expression more tired than she’d allowed it to be at the table. “You look unwell, Dorian.”

He lets loose a laugh that rattles through his bones. “I feel unwell, Maevaris.”

“Then come, sit with me. Tell me what troubles you.” She reaches for his arm, her demeanor comforting, but he avoids her grasp and takes another step towards the awaiting carriages. “Dorian…”

“What does this accomplish?” he asks, nearly losing his grip on the bottle in his hand. He laughs again, transferring the bottle to his other hand, and rubbing his palm against his robes. “Sitting about a table, _talking_.”

“A further rooting out of the Venatori, for one,” Mae replies. Her gaze seems to probe at him, a long, discerning look. If she comes to a conclusion, perhaps she’ll even tell him. “You seem underwhelmed.”

“I feel underwhelmed,” he says glibly. “The most cutting of insults in our glorious nation, for something to be uninteresting.” He frowns — she deserves none of his scorn. He knows this, regardless of the bile churning in his belly, slithering its way through the rest of him, infecting him down to his toes. “I worry, Mae. I worry for those I care about. I worry that we fight off the birds while the voles come up from underground, destroying our roots.”

She steps towards him and then hesitates. Her hand lingers in the air between them. “This is the most prudent way forward.” She takes another step, as though worried about how he’ll react at her proximity. “I understand your concerns, but we have been laying the groundwork for this movement for the last decade, and before that. This is not something we’ve rushed into. There is no quick resolution.”

Dorian closes his eyes and tips his head back. It feels heavier than it should be. “I’m not naive enough to think there must be.”

“I would never call you naive. But this is…”

When he looks at her again, she’s frowning.

His fingers loosen, lose their grip on the bottle, and it clanks loudly against the stones. Instead of shattering, it rolls away from him, and he leaves it. He’s not sure he could bend over to pick it back up, let alone right himself again afterwards.

“Is it so ridiculous?” he asks in the silence that follows.

“Dorian, you are one of my oldest friends.”

He laughs. “Is that faint praise I hear?” His voice is watery.

“What you seek to do is a laudable goal.”

“But it isn’t achievable,” he says, for himself, so that she doesn’t have to.

“As the Magisterium stands now? When we must reach a majority, to pass even the simplest of resolutions?” She looks as though she is in pain, as though she’d like to do nothing more than take him by the hand. “The treaty with the Qunari will fail, but we’ll be more knowledgeable for it. We’ve evidence already of a plot on Magister Bhakta’s life—”

Dorian opens his mouth and then snaps it shut, and groans through his teeth. _Let her die_ , he’d nearly said, and it chills his blood to know he meant it. But what does it matter, one magister’s life? She surely has an automaton reared from its birth to replace her.

“Goodnight, Maevaris,” Dorian mutters, and turns on his heel, and lets her have the bottle of wine.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thank you to [Jasper](http://archiveofourown.org/users/justjasper) on the beta!! And a huge thank you to y'all for sticking around for..... 4 months while I died at work. :') We're in the home stretch, friends.

The Bull is quiet. Focused. He can be the gregarious helper who cozies up to his fellow slaves, ingratiates himself to them; or he can sit aside, a careful observer, and watch their interactions. Find their tells.

When Elaine’s nervous she fidgets with her hands, wrapping her fingers around each other in intricate knots. When Marcus is trying to determine which lie he should believe for that day — that he has real power here, hard-worn but worthwhile, or that his actions are forgivable given his situation — his eyes unfocus and he appears to stare off into the distance, hands flexing at his sides. When Amelia’s sad she vacillates between hesitant silence and reckless forwardness — an assertiveness she didn’t have when she first came to Qarinus. An assertiveness a kid her age shouldn’t need to have.

He’s glad she’s got it.

Peter’s an unknown quantity. The kid’s nonverbal, both out of discomfort with his new situation and out of fear of the Bull, of the strangers around him.

But the Bull needs information, and he’s not gonna make the kid more uncomfortable than he needs to — but he does need to. There’s gotta be something to be gleaned there, something he could spill about Pavus, about Minrathous.

“Master Pavus bought you from your previous owners?”

The kid swallows, looking around the kitchen — everywhere but at the Bull — like he can locate a means of escape by avoiding his eye. The Bull slides him a mug of the weak ale they get because sometimes it’s not safe to trust the water, and Peter seems grateful to have something to wrap his hands around.

“Yes,” he says, but he still won’t meet the Bull’s eyes. Lie.

The Bull pretends to be distracted, glancing down at a knot in the table, rubbing his thumb in the groove. Kid doesn’t like to be the center of attention. Should’ve had someone else here, as buffer. Elaine wouldn’t approve. Liz, maybe. “For how much?”

The kid doesn’t have an answer to that. He swallows. Licks his lips. “My owner — Master Buccio, I understand who my owner is.” Kid corrects himself too much, unsure of his words. Unsure of what will earn him a whupping. “There was a disagreement in Master Buccio’s favorite tavern, and Master Pavus challenged Master Buccio to a duel.”

The tension in the Bull’s gut loosens at that — Pavus seeing something he disagreed with and trying to make it right, maybe not thinking it all the way through, but doing what he thought would work.

Bull breathes in and curls his fingers into a fist, resting on the table.

Dorian. Not Pavus.

Shit.

“He treat you okay, kid?”

Peter’s mouth opens and closes, and he nods his head quickly, like he doesn’t want anybody to think he’s unhappy with his lot in life. “Yes, of course, I’m grateful—”

Bull grunts and Peter quiets himself, his arms tensing, his hands clenching in his lap. He’s settled in good as he can. Responds well to directions. He winces a lot when he thinks he’s made a mistake — he’d gotten lost the second day he was here, almost bending in half on a bow when Marcus had crisply berated him after. His entire body had shaken like he was caught in a hurricane. He’d kept his eyes on Marcus’s hands.

Bull slumps his shoulders and picks at a splinter in the table with his nail. “You doing okay here?”

The kid’s mouth opens on another fucking bland agreement and Bull knocks his knuckles against the table, startling him into silence.

“You doing okay here?”

The kid’s smart enough to figure shit out, to ensure he doesn’t end up hurting at the end of it. He nods his head once. His face crumples like somebody deflated it. “House Pavus is very kind.”

Bull doesn’t prod him to keep talking — he’s staring straight ahead, like he’s reading from a letter in front of him, like he’s got something to say. “I — I have family in Minrathous. My brother, I. I think he would have liked House Pavus too.” He bites his top lip, drawing it between his teeth, and looks at the far end of the kitchen where the doors out to the estate are half-open to let in the breeze. His next words sound like they were pressed out of him, a heavy weight on his chest until he spat ‘em out: “I’m worried about him. I’d—” He sits up straight and tucks his chin, and looks down at the tabletop. “I’m grateful for Master Pavus, and for my place here.”

Bull’s been handed more believable horseshit from a goat trader but he lets it go. Kid looks like he’s going to shake into pieces anyway.

Bull waves him off.

Peter stands up from the table, ducks his head like Bull’s anybody who’d warrant a bow, and hustles out of the kitchen.

If Dorian were seated across the table from him, Bull thinks he might wring his frigging neck. Rescuing the beleaguered slave from his cruel master — that’s the kind of stuff that lets a man sleep at night, if the man doesn’t take the time to find out about the slave’s family left behind. Bull’d bet half the fucking Pavus estate Peter’s brother’ll be dead in a month. Less, if that bastard Maker’s got any ounce of mercy left.

Bull spreads his fingers flat against the tabletop and forces out the rest of the air in his lungs. Breathes back in, slow. Centers himself on the rise of his chest, on the humid air barreling down his throat.

Dorian’s doing good. Dorian’s doing his best, because Dorian’s not the kind of asshole who’d allow anything but. Whatever happens, Dorian’ll rise triumphant over the smoldering corpse of Tevinter and fucking resurrect it, if he has to.

Bull lifts a hand to his face, rubbing his palm into the scar tissue where his eye used to be.

It happens less now, that Bull sees phantom shapes, lights where his left eye used to see shit. It still happens sometimes — when he wakes up, his right eye closed, he’ll think he can see the bed he passed out in last night, the sun peeking through the curtains, the top of Dorian’s head. That eye’s never seen the top of Dorian’s head, but he can imagine it just fine.

Ghost sensation, Stitches had called it once, and just the sound of it had been creepy enough Bull hadn’t wanted to even talk about it after.

With Dorian half a mad country away, Bull feels an absence in his chest, like somebody’s reached inside and scooped out what’s important. 

Every so often he feels like Dorian’s there — that yawning, empty space is filled, warm, like he’s just woke up in bed with the man he loves against his side. Like with his fucking eye.

Ghost sensation.

The Bull curls his hand into a fist and slams it once, twice, on the tabletop. The wood trembles beneath him, and pointed pain shocks its way up his arm.

  


==

  


Faustina Pavus opens her arms wide, wrapping Lucretia Orosius in her arms. When they pull apart, they both have perfectly coordinated smiles on their faces. Satya Orosius follows after her daughter, kissing both of Pavus’s cheeks and chittering something about the lovely weather they’re having.

Bull follows them into the sunroom where Quinten’s waiting to serve them tea. He props up a wall while they sit and shoot the shit, the Lady Orosius and Pavus all smiles while Lucretia busies herself sorting through the contract laid out across the table. Her eyes scan each page several times through, fastidious.

He can’t say she looks happy, or even content. She doesn’t look troubled though, her expression smooth -- more of that trained-up acting every altus excels at, or just the look of a woman who’s reassured she’s not been swindled by this shitshow.

She notices him watching her. She looks up from the paperwork and catches his eye, and they stare at each for a long minute before she returns her attention to her mother, brightly stating she’d like to look over the grounds. Pavus demurs and Lucretia excuses herself -- but not before beckoning to Bull with a practiced hand. “Accompany me, Bull. I’d prefer your presence to losing myself in the hedges.”

Bull glances at Pavus, who’s working her jaw. She doesn’t have much to fear from House Orosius beyond their undercutting the marriage contract, and so it’s with a feigned smile she agrees to Lucretia’s request.

Bull follows Lucretia outside, curious to see what she’s looking to accomplish with this. He’s not had a significant amount of time to take her act apart, but she’s not seemed particularly devious -- no more than the average Tevinter, anyway. Ambitious, sure. Cruel, when she needs to be.

She starts off in that vein, eager to draw first blood: “Faustina has remarked frequently on your agreeable nature. I was unaware beasts were capable of such composure.”

It’s not worth a reaction. He’s heard worse, from people he actually gives a nug’s ass about. She’s going for incendiary and she’s not worth the trouble to get pissed. “You just here to poke the sleeping bear?”

She stops near the fountain and stares at him, eyes narrowed, lips thin. “Are you a sleeping bear? Have I need to advise Faustina?”

“Mistress’s got me busy keeping her safe. Don’t have a lot of time to cook something up.” He moves around her and walks towards the fountain, sitting on the bench circling it and stretching out his knee.

Lucretia’s laugh is like discordant bells. He doesn’t look up at her, instead reaching down and kneading the muscle around his kneecap, firming his jaw through the bite of pain.

They stay there like that for a couple minutes. Maybe Lucretia really did want to see grounds. Maybe she’s got plans for once she’s married — visions of tearing out the shrubs and installing new benches.

Eventually, she moves nearer to him, as though to emphasize the privacy of their situation. “You assist Faustina in her daily tasks.”

He nods once, working his thumb into the side of his leg.

“The contract Houses Orosius and Pavus have written up is well-constructed, from what little they’ve shown me.”

He’s not sure what she’s trying to accomplish by telling him this. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the legalese the Houses’ solicitors have concocted, and she’s not the type to hold a slave in high regard. But she must know he’s been spending all of his days with Faustina, and that he’s got a vested interest in Dorian -- or at least as much as a fucktoy’s capable of having.

She must be in the mood for digging, if he’s who she’s resorted to going to.

“I was curious as to what you had gleaned. About its strength, and what its being upheld entailed.”

Bull looks up from his knee. “You don’t get to annul because your husband fucks livestock, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Lucretia purses her lips. “If a marriage in Tevinter could be done away with based on one’s extracurriculars, few alti would ever marry. Tell me what else you’ve heard.”

He sits up straight, hooking his hands under the rear of the bench, the backs of his knuckles just grazing the water in the fountain. He holds her gaze until her expression twists into a frown.

“I’ve been summoned to Minrathous.”

The words lodge behind Bull’s eye. Just inside his ears. At the back of his throat, like he’s swallowed something sharp. It aches when he moves his head, when he looks away from her.

It aches, until it doesn’t.

The gardener’s been doing a lot of pruning. Amelia’s been helping -- she has callouses, blisters, bruises decorating her hands now. Maybe she’ll get her dream, get to work with the plants in the garden, get outside of the house and breathe in fresh air, get some color in her cheeks. That’d be good. She doesn’t let the way rose thorns dig into her fingertips bother her.

Lucretia’s still talking.

“He’s not one for correspondence, is he?” she asks, and Bull tries to guess what she’s been talking about. What she’s been implying about Dorian, or his relationship to Bull.

Maybe she’s just asking a question.

“No, ma’am.”

Not wholly true. They’ve written each other in the past -- left notes when one of ‘em was headed out with the boys, or written pompous missives on borrowed letterheads, calling each other shit like my esteemed bedmate.

Wouldn’t make sense to write, now. Can’t have a magister sending love notes to his shackled beast.

Lucretia’s watching him like she expects him to lash out at her. She hasn’t relaxed since they walked outside. She wasn’t relaxed when she first arrived. She holds her hands in front of her, completely still, and gives him a practiced smile. “The wedding has been set for next month, before the monsoons come. I expect the reason for my traveling to Minrathous is to discuss the finer details.

“Shall I give him your regards?”

There are piles of cuttings that haven’t been hauled away yet -- they leave that stuff for Bull, his hands tougher than everybody else’s even with whatever gloves they’ve got. He hasn’t had a chance to take care of it shadowing Pavus as much as he’s been doing. He’ll ask her permission to do it tonight.

Lucretia shifts in front of him. Not a nervous gesture -- a reminder. She asked a question.

The Bull tries to remember what -- right. An offer, or something she can hang over Dorian’s head. Doesn’t matter much what her motive is. “Do what suits you,” he says, and ducks his head to her when he pushes himself to his feet, before heading back to the house.

He regrets begging off as soon as he’s crossed the threshold. He missed an opportunity there. He could’ve encoded the letter, used one of the ciphers they’d employed in the past.

Could’ve told Dorian he’s not sure any of this was a good idea.

He could’ve asked if he’d get an invite to the wedding.

 _Don’t go down that road_ , he thinks, and drags a hand across his face. _That’s a fucking bad road._

He hears the crunch of gravel under Lucretia’s soles behind him, and forces himself down the hallway towards the kitchen. Pavus will be fine in the company of the Orosius women. He needs to screw his head back on straight anyway -- sit down with his priorities, even if they’re straightforward.

He shouldn’t have to remind himself of ‘em so often:

Let Dorian do his thing. Work his magic. That’s easy to do -- Dorian’s in Minrathous now, putting the pieces together. The session’s out… at some point. He’ll come home to Qarinus, and he’ll have made something happen.

Bull dips a mug into one of the rain barrels kept near the dock at the far end of the kitchen, drinks deeply and then splashes the rest of it across his face. It’s too warm to be refreshing, but it still centers him. Lets him focus on the feel of it streaming down his skin.

Keep Amelia safe. Keep Elaine safe. Help the kid settle.

Easy, a list of things he can tick off his fingers. Stuff he’s already got underway, the only thing to do maintaining the status quo.

The water’s too warm. It feels hot where it sticks in his eyebrows, on his lip. He tugs up his tunic and wipes it off, before his mind can find something to latch onto -- the balmy heat of the Tevinter summer, his whole self unsettled, and heat dripping down his skin.

 _Fuck_ , he thinks, pulling the tunic off and balling it in his hands.

 _Fuck_ , he thinks again, and wipes his face again. The last priority sounds like it’s straight out of Dorian’s mouth:

_Survive._

  


==

  


He wakes up in the middle of the night and reaches out to his side for — something.

He lies there and breathes. Closes and opens his right hand, stretched across the floor.

It doesn’t feel like his hand. Something brushes against his fingers and his palm, and it’s not immediately clear they’re what’s touching each other.

He remembers this feeling.

There are exercises he can do, steps he can take that he half-remembers. He sits up and rubs at his face with the hand that still feels like his.

He stands. He pauses in the hallway. Heading right will take him to the kitchens. He can light a lamp and walk through the exercises. He’ll be rusty, but he’ll remember them.

He heads left.

He takes the stairs slowly.

He stops again, outside of the door into Dorian’s rooms. He’s not slept well in... 

If he’s honest with himself, the last time he slept well was on the bed behind that door. It had more to do with the company, probably, but there’s something to be said for sense memory.

The door’s locked. He reaches for the knob. It’s whole seconds before he realizes his right hand doesn’t move. He reaches with his left.

It’s locked. He could bust it open. The possibility of a good night sleep and a soft bed’s on the other side of that door. A bed that may hold an ounce of Dorian’s scent.

Bull’s shoulders shake when he exhales. He leans against the door, closing his eye. He knows it’s not a strong lock, nothing like what Pavus has got installed on her room.

He pushes himself into the middle of the hallway and looks around. Nobody’s awake. He knows this. It’s the ass end of the night.

He lowers his shoulder and aims at the door. It connects, loudly. It echoes in the hallway. He freezes. Waits.

He could break into the room. He could take the door off its fucking hinges, but where would that get him?

His right hand’s tensed, fingers spread enough it hurts — but distantly, like the heat of flame from six feet back.

If he causes trouble, who knows what happens. He’s important to Pavus, but he’s not irreplaceable. She has connections. She could replace an oxman.

He rubs his left thumb into the meat of his right palm. It feels like touching somebody else.

He steps away from the door. Goes back to his room.

  


==

  


House Pavus hosts a dinner party to celebrate the impending nuptials, as far as Bull can gather. Grandstanding. Dorian Pavus will fuck a woman, after all. The attendees are local, less upper crust than at Dorian’s induction to the Magisterium, but Bull doesn’t recognize any of ‘em. 

Dorian’s uncle isn’t there. Bull bets he was invited. Frankly, he’s surprised Faustina didn’t hand-deliver the message with bells on.

The party extends into the night. There’s enough liquor flowing that Bull’s not surprised when the guests turn lascivious. A woman with precisely coiled blonde hair and an impressive decolletage keeps him in her sights at all times. She’ll try to hold his eye when he glances at her, but staring her down would only play into whatever fantasy she’s been cooking up half her life. She’s easy to avoid.

He keeps a lookout for Elaine and the other kids from the kitchen. There are wandering hands, but nobody seems particularly interested in anything beyond that. Bull will know if anyone puts in a request to Pavus later, anyway. Maybe he can chuck those letters in the fire grate before she can look ‘em through.

In one of his scans of the room he finds Amelia standing before two alti, a man and a woman, her hands straight at her sides and her chin down. The alti are laughing, and the man takes Amelia by the wrist and leads her around in a spin.

He looks at her.

The woman says something with a frown on her face but then she’s laughing again. She hits the man on the shoulder and he releases Amelia’s wrist.

Amelia takes a step back, and the woman reaches for her hair, sliding her fingers deep into her curls before tugging once, twice, and laughing to her companion. Amelia stays still.

Bull could be across the room in seconds. Even with their magic, he could kill one of ‘em before they could rally. Nobody at a party like this expects the help to break their neck. Nobody comfortable staring at a little girl is worried--

Bull takes an empty tray from one of the serving girls and excuses himself to the kitchens. Quinten is there, already starting clean up. Bull joins him.

When Amelia’s finally released back to the kitchens, Bull hands her a cup of tea. She takes it, hands shaking, confusion writ plain across her features. Confusion. Fear, maybe.

Bull memorized the man's face. He memorized the face of the woman with him. When Dorian's finished, Bull will find them and--

He pours Amelia another cup of tea.

He sits across from her and tries to come up a fun story, something that'll distract her from the weight of those people's gazes. Something that won’t sink its hooks into his own heart if he starts reminiscing.

Bull reminds himself:

Dorian is in Minrathous.

Dorian is a politician, and politics are slow. Laborious.

Politics don't change things quickly. Politics don't care about a little girl whose feet are too big for her shoes. Who's begun getting lingering looks from bored socialites.

Dorian came here because he feels like he owes them something -- owes Tevinter, owes his family, owes House Pavus. With Halward dead and Faustina steps away from assassination, Dorian's the last hope House Pavus has.

Late that night Bull retrieves the journal he lifted from the Healer's clinic. He’d slid it into the sole of his boot, thin enough no one’d notice. Made him walk funny for a while, but he adjusted quick.

For not the first time, Bull tries to make sense of it -- the bloody pages. The ranting.

The Healer's got skeletons in his closet he wouldn't want aired.

Maybe with the right motivation, he can tell Bull where Halward's bastard's gotten to.

Maybe Bull can find someone else who owes House Pavus.

  


==

  


He doesn’t have time to stake out the clinic, to check if the Healer’s schedule’s changed. He shows up late, House Pavus seal on his chest.

The door opens quickly under his hands. It’s dark, quiet. He moves inside, towards the desk where he found the notebooks. He picks them up in stacks, starts thumbing through them -- looking for the telltale warp of the pages, the color of blood that means when the Healer handled it his fingers were wet.

There are steps from the other room.

Bull freezes, weighing his options. He’s too far from the door. Even if he weren’t, the desk has obviously been disturbed: drawers open, papers disturbed.

He fishes out one of the journals and pulls the chair around. When the Healer strides into the backroom Bull’s flipping through the pages, legs stretched out in front of him. Doubtful anyone could intimidate the creepy piece of shit, but if anyone’s got a chance, it’s him.

The Healer barely breaks his gait. He strides across the room and starts rifling through the collection of bottles he’s got spread across the wall of shelves. Bull’s halfway to wondering if he’s been stricken blind when the Healer finally turns to him, face drawn. Tired. “Have you amused yourself with my things?”

“Real riveting read,” Bull replies, lifting the journal in his hand. “The best part’s when the entries go all wonky like whoever’s writing it lost the plot. Like what you did with the blood though. Evocative.”

The Healer snorts, and holds his hand out when he approaches Bull. “You’ve no justification for going through my personal affects.”

His hand hovers between them, fingers beckoning for the journal.

Bull opens it up and flips through the pages until he finds the beginnings of the ranting, the repeated words -- the center of the spread is a single smear of blood, like something dripped and then the Healer tried to wipe it off. “So tell me, asshole. Do you just like the look of it?”

The Healer retrieves his hand. He takes a step back. He folds his hands in front of his waist. “What are you hoping to accomplish?”

The Bull has a laundry list of answers to that question, but the most important is: “I want to find one of your escapees.”

“I’ve helped countless leave Tevinter.” His expression is… it’s absent. It’s what a person looks like when they’re asleep. Blank. Bull thinks of not being able to feel his hand, and wonders how dark it gets in this fucker’s head that his face is what’s affected.

You can use that lack of connection, that repression -- Bull’s used it. Him and separating the shit out are old friends. The Healer’s an old hat at it, looks like. Would’ve had to be, with all that blood.

The Healer had blood on his hands the first time Bull met him.

“Then I’ll get specific. Pavus slave, human, pregnant. Prophet’s laurel, you call ‘em. Elaine was with her. You made like she died on the table while you were getting rid of her bastard. Took her south to Nevarra.” Bull could see how someone could forget a face, a name. But the Healer knew Elaine.

“I provide a service,” the Healer says, tone even, and he steps back towards Bull, and puts his hand out again. “I operate this clinic to help those who require it.” It crosses his face in a split second, the disgust. If Bull hadn’t been staring, he wouldn’t have seen it. “I came to Tevinter to experience freedom, and now I aid others in securing theirs.”

“Congratulations.” Bull folds his arms, holding the book against his side. “So, Henrietta. You remember her?”

The Healer smiles, a brief slit of teeth. “You would do well to leave, the Iron Bull.”

Bull leans forward on the chair, drawing his legs back. “You’d have said you didn’t know who I was talking about, if you didn’t. You’re a shitty liar.”

In the following silence, the Bull thinks again:

The Healer had blood on his hands the first time the Bull met him.

The Healer’d cleaned his hands before assisting them.

The Bull gets to his feet. The Healer doesn’t move back. The Bull watches his face for something -- another hint, another slip. There’s nothing. The man looks bored.

“You don’t take very good care of your journals.”

“My priorities don’t include bookkeeping.”

“How ‘bout you tell me what your priorities are then?”

“Tevinter is septic,” the Healer says after a beat, and his tongue slides across his teeth. His eyes unfocus. “The infection runs throughout.”

The Bull keeps still. There’s something about how the Healer’s holding himself now -- shoulders back, chin up, face pale, and those _eyes_ — that’s trickling down the Bull’s spine like a horror spell. “Good for you then,” the Bull says, watching the Healer’s hands, “getting people out.”

“ _People_ ,” the Healer spits out, and something in him changes. His jaw goes slack, his mouth open. His eyes are wide. A capillary’s burst next to his left iris. He’s still, barely breathing.

There’s an itch at the base of the Bull’s skull, the same feeling he’d get moving through the grass on Seheron when they were being watched. _Don’t expose your neck to a predator_. He doesn’t step back.

“Where’s Henrietta?”

The Healer stares past the Bull, like he’s remembering another shore too. “She kept crying. They all cry.”

The Bull watches his hands. He hasn’t moved them yet. _Yet_. Something’s wrong, about him and about Henrietta. The Bull feels like he’s nearly put it together.

The blood.

“What did you do.”

“Had I been born in Tevinter, my life would have been blessed. Instead, I’ve come here as an outsider, and the closest I get to the alti are putting their toys back together.” He laughs at that, a sound like the wind through dried leaves. It’s tired. It’s _old_. 

The Healer lifts a hand to his head -- the Bull watches it move, waits for it to come at him -- and slides through his greying hair. “I made the effort. There’s only so much one man can do, when something falls to shit.” He looks off into the distance again, as though listening, and he laughs low. “I’ve done nothing any of them didn’t deserve.”

The Bull gauges the distance to the exit, and what’d it take to incapacitate the bastard before anything went sideways. He’d never get an answer then. He can’t leave yet.

 _The blood_.

“Where’s Henrietta?”

The Healer’s eyes seem to _glow_. “The bitch wouldn’t stop crying.” The glow extends past his sclera to the translucent skin around his eyes. “I’ve seen the worst of it. It’s better to die than remain a slave. There was gratitude in her eyes,” he hisses, and the light seeps down his face, but under his skin, as though he’s hollow. The fade’s not thin here -- the Bull knows how that feels, can identify the goosebumps it raises on his arms.

He reaches forward at the same time that the Healer snarls at him, lifting a crackling hand that pulses green in the dark of the room.

The Bull’s spent hours determining the best way to take down a mage. The quickest. The way least likely to end in him dead.

Reach for the neck. Smooth motion, no time to think through it, no time for the mage to react. If the mage reacts, you’re dead.

There’s electricity spiking over the Bull’s skin but he’s endured worse. There was a saarebas on the beach who could call down the storm. She was desperate. The Bull knows desperate.

Use your bulk. Overpower them. Reach for the neck. Clean break.

No blood. No crying.

 _Prophet’s laurel to the Magister_ , the Bull thinks, stumbling to the floor. His body feels like he’s fallen into the embers of a lingering fire.

_Unsuccessful._


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heeeey, so, uh, i guess, i'm not dead? which is honestly a relief after this year. this year's been... rough, friends, and i'm not just talking about how the usa is officially the worst. i'm kind of lucky to be alive lmao. so i hope some of y'all are still interested in this fic, even though Evil Politicians Being Evil is a little too on the nose nowadays. thank you for your patience, and i hope you enjoy. ♥
> 
> heads up, this hasn't been betaed, so if you see something, say something.

It is with no small amount of bewilderment that Dorian returns to his quarters after a long day of carefully insulting half of the Magisterium to find Calpernia pacing in the foyer.

A small box sits on the side table, an item she must have brought with her, unless someone has planted an explosive sometime during the day. When Dorian shuts the door behind him, she looks first to the box and then to him, stopping mid-stride.

Dorian removes and hangs his cloak. “I was unaware of any meeting this evening.”

She holds herself like a startled halla, set to sprint if necessary — but first waiting to confirm the threat.

“An unexpected need. A change in plans,” she replies, tone forcibly even. Her hands flex at her sides. She lurches out of her careful stillness, opening the box’s lid and retrieving its contents before stalking into the main room.

When he joins her, he sees the clear, hexagonal crystals capped with long silver chains in each of her hands.

She holds one of them out to him. It’s heavier than it looks, and when he holds it up to the light of the nearest sconce, the light somehow barely permeates the thing. When he glances back to her, she’s drawn her own crystal up to her chest and is whispering something to it.

The crystal in Dorian’s hand glares with a green light from within, abruptly enough that he nearly drops the thing.

He hears her murmur the melodic lines of a poem he remembers from his youth, something Marcus would recite to him when he refused to sleep as a child — a poem about a slave’s first day free on the road to Antiva. It was a subtle act of sedition that his father quickly put an end to.

He stares at her, and her mouth bends into a smile that seems absent from the rest of her face. “The crystals are linked. Each is activated by its own power word. _Ma emma harel_ , for what you hold in your hand.”

“Elvish?” The runes delicately carved into the silver are dwarvish, though the magic is clearly Tevinter.

“I thought it appropriate,” Calpernia replies, and loops the chain around her neck, tucking the crystal underneath her robes. “The language of slaves.”

Dorian holds the crystal by its chain and searches for Calpernia’s motivation.

For all of her anger, she is a self-contained woman. She holds her emotions at arm’s reach — a part of her still, but distinct from her person. She does not let them control her.

As a younger man, he may have thought her a confidence trickster, a woman playing multiple roles in order to accomplish what she willed. But with the benefit of age — and having spent years with his life absolutely lousy with spies — Dorian has found her to be wholly herself. The only game she plays is that of politics, not treachery, though in Tevinter they’re frequently indistinguishable.

There is a reason she’s gifting this to him. It suits her, clearly, and perhaps… Dorian swallows, and loops the chain around his neck. Perhaps she trusts him. “And out of your entire network, why provide it to me?”

“I’ll require your aid in the coming days,” she replies promptly, and brushes past him and out the door before he can process the action.

==

The first time Calpernia’s gifted crystal activates, warm against his skin under his robes, she tells him to avoid the meeting near the docks that night, for safety. The second time, she advises him on the storm brewing with Magister Zimisces, who seems to be itching to duel any Lucerni he sees. (Dorian thanks her for the advice, and seeks the man out. It’s a frustratingly quick affair, and Dorian takes a certain kind of pleasure in telling him that, standing over him while he convulses, charred hands clutched to his chest.)

The first time he reaches out to her, he tells her of the woman he spoke with in the market within walking distance of the Magisterium, his name and that of his fiancée carrying the proper clout to allow her to speak plainly; the latest shipment they’d received from the south was of mediocre quality, and it would be more cost effective in the long run to sell the whelps for a pittance than to try and train them up properly. _Elves, you know_.

She’s silent, for long enough that he’s concerned the connection has been lost. Eventually she says, “Thank you,” and he feels satisfaction settle thickly in his belly.

==

The session breaks early the following Monday, and Dorian retreats to the Atrium Flores to enjoy what little time alone he has available to him. Of course, it would appear to be Dorian's lot in life, to be surprised by women in his chambers.

"The guard let me in," Lucretia says, kindly leaving the "because of our engagement" unspoken. There is little of Tevinter that Dorian finds firm comfort in, but their shared dismay at their impending nuptials is a balm. "You'll be reassured to know that I'm boarding closer to the Magisterium, and this will likely be all you see of me during my time in Minrathous."

"How fortunate for us both." He brushes past her to stand before the liquor cabinet. None of the glasses have been washed recently, so he doesn't offer her anything before pouring himself a brandy. "Pray tell, for what reason do I have the pleasure of your visit? With our mothers such firm friends, we've little to discuss."

"Not so." She draws a packet from inside her robes and drops it on his desk. "I've been tasked by our beloved mothers to deliver to you a selection of potential arrangements for the event." Her smile appears gouged across her face, painful and unwanted. "I've no desire to review them with you. It's merely convenient for me to be relegated to messenger, as the guild reconvenes during Friday’s session at the Magisterium."

Dorian considers what he knows of the schedule for Friday’s session. Nothing extraordinary, but the presence of the slavers guild provides them with an opportunity for — something. A demonstration. He says, "How fortuitous," and Lucretia makes no attempt to stifle her answering scoff.

"I also," Lucretia says, and then stops herself. She frowns past him, to the bay window that overlooks the Atrium Flores’s gardens. "Based upon the relationship my parents share, I've found communication to be of utmost importance."

"We communicate quite clearly, I'd thought," Dorian replies, and thinks of the cold silences his own parents so excelled at. "There's little we need to express beyond our disdain."

Lucretia walks towards him and — taking advantage of his surprise at the maneuver — steals his snifter of brandy, swirling it contemplatively before drinking. "I've also found that no one likes it when their toys are broken."

Dorian is tired. He is tired, and disinterested in playing games with her. His request to his mother to release their slaves — to commute their service to employment, if desired — has surely been received by now. If Lucretia is here to revel in his disappointment in his request’s surely being disregarded, she will leave disappointed. Frankly, he’d appreciate it were she to fuck right off and leave him to his liquor in peace, as though they were in a proper relationship. "One would think broken toys would mean business opportunities for a slaver."

She passes the snifter back to him. She has a face bred for smirking — the expression suits her perfectly. “It’s been three weeks since you left Qarinus, has it not?”

He narrows his eyes at her. She’s goading him, and he has neither the patience nor the lucidity for it. Neither does he have the fortitude to dwell on thoughts of what he’s left in Qarinus.

Of whom.

“Lucretia, I’ve had a trying day, and if you would be so kind as to—”

“Of course,” she says, and she swans past him to retrieve her robe from where it hangs near the door. “We’ve a Thursday meeting set with the Archon, so there’s much to review. Do enjoy the headache our mothers have prepared for you.”

He does enjoy the packet she’s left behind, once she’s finally gone from his chambers. It serves magnificently as kindling.

==

Dorian acknowledges with a strange, distant sort of awareness that he has been an abysmal friend, let alone a colleague.

He greets Maevaris with a tight smile, free from any of the performativity he’s wielded so far in Minrathous. She looks upon him with a similar expression of her own, and clasps him by the forearm.

They’re seated in an alcove near the back of some restaurant Mae’s coachman delivered him to, a surprisingly understated establishment for Minrathous. There’s no blinding opulence, or half-naked attendants feeding magisters by hand. The man who takes their order may actually be soporati. 

“You look unwound,” Mae says into her cup, the words somehow kind. Dorian wonders if that is indeed how he feels in this moment.

“The better word may be ‘untethered’,” he responds, and frowns once the words have left his lips. He is no such thing, and the both of them know it; but it felt passingly powerful to say it: to claim that he has no obligations. “Do you know, I’ve little idea of what I am anymore.”

Mae hums, and sits back in her chair. “I think you’re treating yourself particularly harshly.”

He laughs. “Whether or not you’re correct is immaterial. I feel adrift. I wonder—.” He cuts himself off before he can say the words: that he should never have returned to Tevinter. She seems to hear them regardless.

“Varric wrote me regularly, during the pinnacle of the Inquisition.” The waiter brings them several plates laden with curries and rice, and she serves herself before she continues. “It must have been… satisfying, to have such immediate results.”

“The world’s not ending, you mean,” Dorian replies, and stabs a hunk of chicken. “And do not act as though instant gratification is not a time-honored Tevinter institution.”

She inclines her head to him, granting him that. But she places her palms flat on either side of her plate, and he’s briefly concerned she’s going to stand and lecture at him. “You carry with you the immediacy of the old, combined with the impatience of the young.” At least she doesn’t stand. “This is a long game we play, my friend.”

He hums in response, because he doesn’t trust himself to find kind words. He understands her point, of course, but that understanding does nothing to address how suffocated he feels — an ever-constant weight on his chest. Pressure at the base of his skull. It changes nothing about Calpernia’s “family”.

It does nothing for his _broken toy_.

They eat. Midway through the meal Maevaris tests the waters of conversation again. She says carefully, “I’ve heard that you’ve received a visitor,” and allows him the space to answer as he sees fit.

He reaches for his wine glass and readily swallows half of its contents. He’s becoming a bit of a lush, isn’t he. “I’m becoming a bit of a lush, aren’t I.”

“The best of men often do,” she replies, and though her words are clipped, he can hear her concern more than any sense of judgment. Or perhaps judgment can be found there are well, and he’s simply grateful for it — a steadying, trustworthy hand he’s been without for some time.

“The slavers guild is converging on Minrathous. They’ve somesuch to discuss on Friday, and I’m sure we’ll have the blessed opportunity to sit through their braggadocio. Perhaps I’ll have another chance to challenge someone to a duel.”

One of her delicate brows arches, and he laughs. “I fear we must ultimately disagree, Mae. Better to fight than wait.”

He knows she is not a woman who needs to be advised in this matter. Neither of them have lived their lives shrinking from confrontation, or allowing others to dictate their choices. He knows this. But he has also learned it is simple to ignore unpleasant truths if they are not forced upon you.

She frowns, and sits upright in her chair. “We are politicians, Dorian. Not revolutionaries.”

He rubs his thumb over the side of his wine glass. “Perhaps what Tevinter needs is revolutionaries.”

“I am not a timid woman.” There is a steel to her voice. In her spine. He has a difficult time looking directly at her, but she deserves his respect. “I have found there is a slow way to enact change, and there is a quick way. The quick way involves a significant amount of death, on all sides, and for many who have no control over the machinations of power.” The smile that storms across her features is not dissimilar to a sword’s edge. “The slow way has its own drawbacks. It’s overburdened with words and legislation, an unappealing amount of lip service, and offers no immediate relief — but we can burn Tevinter alive and rebuild, or we can turn the ship to starboard: slow, but whole.

“It is not — Dorian, I know the frustrations of which you speak. People are suffering, daily, maltreated and subjugated. And we pick our battles, and it’s unsavory. But each month brings with it new allies, and new achievements, and we progress towards a better future. Slow, but whole.”

There is wisdom in her words. He knows what she says is reasonable, and perhaps true. Had he returned to Tevinter a younger man, he may have even agreed. He had time, then. He had nothing himself to lose.

But he feels the fire in his veins now. He thinks — Maker, he thinks of the best man he has ever known reduced in worth because of a philosophy.

He thinks Calpernia would see Tevinter burn, and he would not stop her.

==

It is with the muddled clarity of a long night of drinking that he picks up the communication crystal and holds it firmly in his palm. “Calpernia, I’ve a brilliant idea.”

==

The secretary gives Dorian a long look before referring to her scheduling book. “I’ve not—”

Dorian leans forward and gives the woman his most insouciant smile. “We’re early, I know. My fiancée, Lucretia Orosius, is unable to make her appointment with the Archon. She requested I meet with him in her stead.”

The secretary meets Dorian’s gaze with searching eyes, before she glances at Calpernia. “I’ve always known Alta Orosius to be a punctual woman,” she says, but she stands from her desk regardless and beckons them to follow her.

Dorian glances at Calpernia, and feels the thrill of accomplishment at the smile on her face. They have perhaps twenty minutes before Lucretia arrives with her own retinue; as long as they’re gone beforehand, it should be a coup. The Archon’s secretary would never admit to having entertained someone not on the Archon’s schedule.

“Magister Erasthenes.” The Archon stands from behind his desk and meets them midway into his chambers. The room is remarkably understated for Minrathous, more similar in appearance to a Ferelden’s study than that of a Tevinter. Dorian remembers his mother’s critique of the man when Dorian had been a child — that despite his talents, he’d chosen strange traditions to disregard. He’d maintained the status quo, of course. To not do so was to invite challengers, of which any Archon would have in droves already.

Dorian finds he has a difficult time viewing the man as anything but the ruling maggot atop a diseased carcass. The most powerful there is, but he still consumes rot and shit.

Archon Silva takes one of Calpernia’s hands in both of his, and Dorian watches him shrewdly review her features. “How blessed, that you look nothing like your father.”

The veiled accusation glances off of Calpernia and she smiles in return, inclining her head. “If only we were all so fortunate to escape the trappings of history.”

The Archon chortles and, releasing Calpernia’s hands, directs a fond look Dorian’s way. “Am I to be beset by sly arguments this afternoon? It was my understanding I would be reviewing proposals from your fiancée’s guild, but I find you both instead.”

Calpernia had latched onto Dorian’s idea immediately, her pleased eagerness briefly unsettling; yet Dorian had known this was something actionable, that would achieve a result beyond talking out their asses about what Tevinter could be if they all just tried harder. She wanted the Archon present on Friday, for the debates regarding the ceasefire treaty with the Qunari.

“This is merely an entreaty, Archon Silva, on behalf of the Lucerni caucus. Surely you’ve heard of our proposal.”

“Incitement, rather,” Archon Silva replies, and returns to his desk while the both of them stand. He doesn’t invite them to sit. “None of us are naive enough to believe a ceasefire would come to fruition. It would benefit and hurt Tevinter in equal measure, which is trifling motivation for change.”

“Then you should attend Friday’s session.” Calpernia places a palm on the top of the Archon’s desk, leaning towards him. “We wouldn’t condescend to imply your views would change, but we request the opportunity to try.”

The Archon inclines his head, but says nothing in response, and waves them out the door.

In the hallway outside of the Archon’s offices, Dorian reaches for Calpernia, but stops before he touches her arm. She glances at his hand. “What will you plan?”

She raises her own hand towards him, and grasps him by the wrist. “Do you trust me?”

Dorian knows there’s more involved here — that the Archon’s presence is a ridiculous request for the average day in the Magisterium. But the thrill of this, of providing Calpernia with the means with which to do something, fucking _anything_ , lights up the blood in his veins.

He takes her wrist in kind. 

==

“The Archon is here.” Maevaris watches him in his box, her mouth a thin line. She’s tapping her long nails against the arm of her chair.

Dorian watches her fidget and tries to place the source of her nerves. “Calpernia extended an invitation. I imagine she has something planned for the slavers guild.”

Mae smiles grimly, and casts her gaze about the Magisterium. “Undoubtedly. She tends toward the bombastic, doesn’t she.”

“I don’t believe that’s a question that requires an answer,” Dorian replies, and they settle in for the session, Magister Palama beginning his remarks on the importance of infrastructure repair in the south — a sparsely populated region of Tevinter, and one which receives proportional funds. There remains a drive to treat the Nevarra border as tumult-prone as the coast, likely motivated by Palama’s ego and popularity amongst his neighbors.

Dorian lets his mind wander, to consider the collection of slavers seated in the lower level of the hall. A place of honor, close to the floor, and within spitting distance of the Archon if they were so inclined. The Magisterium must honor the good entrepreneurs of Tevinter, after all.

Lucretia sits near the back of the group, still young, inexperienced compared to the rest of the guild. She’s surely aggrieved that her engagement has yet to reap any tangible benefits, socially or economically. Perhaps if she’d managed a better match.

He swallows the bile threatening to taint the back of his throat and returns his focus to the floor — but not for long. He feels the crystal vibrate under his robes, and draws it out by its chain. Mae casts him a curious look. He waves her off, but raises the crystal to his lips and whispers it active. He has no chance to greet Calpernia before she’s talking, words hushed but clear in their box.

“The Archon is present, is he not?”

Dorian cups his hand around the crystal. She’s not here then. “As invited. And where are you?”

“Good.”

It’s not uncommon for her to ignore his questions, but still — Dorian feels something akin to lead settle in his stomach.

“Thank you for your assistance, Magister Pavus. You were… more than I’d expected.”

He pulls the crystal away from his face to stare at it, as though by doing so he could make sense of Calpernia’s words. And then her voice comes through again — loud as a bell, amplified. _Pleased_.

“Ignite."

The Magisterium was constructed with magic, as was every building of import in Tevinter. The stone was softened and coaxed into shapes unachievable with even a dwarf's proficiency, and once formed, wards were inlaid in the floors, the pillars, the walls — for strength, and for protection. To account for the tendency of magisters to respond with fire and lightning when presented with uncompromising disagreements. To ensure the Magisterium withstood the people within it, and anyone who may threaten it from outside.

Dorian rarely considers architecture. Bull's always been the one fascinated by that.

The wards beneath Dorian's feet, and to his sides, and — he glances up, and feels his throat close. His heart lurch in his chest. The ceiling.

He grabs Maevaris by the arm and pulls her to her feet as he stands. Her mouth opens on an objection but her eyes catch on the gleaming wards, and she clutches Dorian's forearm in her hand.

Their combined voices, barriers, that gentle wash of magic, are drowned out by the roar of a hundred simultaneous explosions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm more active on twitter now than i am on tumblr, but you can find me on both platforms under username amurderof. if you liked what you read, i'd love to hear from you via a comment or tweet/ask. we've got... maaaybe 2 chapters left on this wild ride.

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter seventeen is chugging along. Let's just say it's gonna be a blast. :)
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and if you have any feelings/thoughts/ideas/RANTS please drop me a comment below, or shoot me an ask over on [tumblr](http://amurderof.tumblr.com). :D
> 
> Also — even when I don't get the time to reply, I genuinely cherish your comments. Thank you _so much_. I'm so sincerely happy y'all are digging this.


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